


let them hear me shout (for you)

by Willow_bird



Series: on the tip of my tongue (say something) [8]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: ASL, Andrew Minyard Loves Neil Josten, Depictions of Death, Depictions of a Car Crash, F/M, Flashbacks, Hospitalization Due to Injury, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Kevin Day is a Good Friend, Kissing, M/M, Major Character Injury, Neil Josten loves Andrew Minyard, Nightmares, Non-Sexual Intimacy, POV Andrew Minyard, Panic Attacks, Reference to Tilda Minyard (abuse and murder and death by car collision), Reference to Violence and Injury from Vehicle vs. Pedestrian collision, Selective Mutism Neil Josten, Slow Dancing, Soft Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard, Wholesome Twinyards, mentions of child abuse, non-verbal communication, self-care
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:15:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 49,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25921930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Willow_bird/pseuds/Willow_bird
Summary: Andrew’s mind was already racing, but before he could allow himself to focus on the worst-case scenarios he gritted out a sharp, “What happened?”He heard Aaron take a breath in. “Neil doesn’t have any brain or spinal injuries.”---This takes place over the course of December and January of Neil’s Sophomore year, following the events in ‘say something’ and ‘bite your tongue’. An injury that could have been career-ending has Neil facing multiple challenges at once. He has everything to lose -- and Andrew won’t allow all they’ve fought for to be fornothing. The first chapter is the Andrew POV to'i won't say we aren't family'.
Relationships: Aaron Minyard & Andrew Minyard, Kevin Day & Andrew Minyard, Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard, Nicky Hemmick/Erik Klose
Series: on the tip of my tongue (say something) [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1782130
Comments: 225
Kudos: 610





	1. crash

**Author's Note:**

> Hello friends! First of all, thank you so much to everyone who has been following this series o.o I can’t believe this is the **eighth** entry!! I guess you could call this one ‘the official part three’ of _say something_ , whereas _bite your tongue_ was kinda like ‘part two’ and the rest is all… extra fluff? You know what I mean. Unlike many of the other entries in the series, I do very much highly recommend that you read both ‘say something’ and ‘bite your tongue’ at least before reading this one -- not necessarily for the events themselves that take place, but for the character context. Our boys have done a lot of growing, particularly within their relationship, since Neil first texted ‘ _talking is hard today_ ’ to Andrew. 
> 
> ANYWAY! This is going to be another multi-chapter, wholly Andrew POV fic. As of right now, I anticipate **ten** chapters, though please forgive me if that changes ^^; I’m not going to commit to a posting schedule _just_ yet because I’m about to start a BRAND NEW JOB (!!!!!!) so I’m not sure yet how that’s going to affect writing and posting times and somesuch. 
> 
> I’ll stop blabbering at you now ^.^ I hope you enjoy!!

When Kevin had asked him to come with him to this stupid thing, Andrew’s instinctive response had been a very pointed “fuck no”. First of all, it was on the other side of the damn country and that meant fucking air travel. _Unnecessary_ air travel, because Andrew wasn’t the one that people wanted to interview for some stupid documentary. Secondly, the subject matter of the documentary was, yeah, _exy_. Weekends were when Andrew _didn’t_ have to fucking think about exy, and now Kevin wanted to subject him to it for three damn days? No. 

Except, the documentary was about the creation of exy and about Kayleigh Day. Except, Wymack wasn’t able to go. Except, Neil had given him that _look_ when he’d come to him later that day and asked him again if he would go with Kevin -- so that Kevin wouldn’t have to be alone.

Stupid rabbit owed him, _big time_ , and he’d held off on naming his price so that he would have all fucking weekend to weigh his misery and come up with a suitable exchange. 

At least no one had seemed interested in provoking him into talking. He’d spent all day on Friday and most of the day Saturday lounging about in semi-comfortable chairs, scrolling through his phone or texting with Neil. A couple of times Kevin looked like he was about to have a mental fucking breakdown so he dragged the moron out of the studio for some air and then a lunch break, but otherwise it was a thankfully quiet trip. 

_So far._

“Let’s go out tonight,” Kevin whined from his bed in their hotel room. They’d only just gotten back to the room after another day of Kevin giving his interviews. Andrew had no idea how the man wasn’t worn out by putting on his media face for so damn long. He was exhausted just from watching him. 

“Who are you, Nicky?” Andrew scoffed, sending a picture of a cat with a sniper rifle to Neil. Although Neil was considerably better about his phone than he had been a year ago, he’d texted a while ago that he was going out for a run and so Andrew didn’t expect an immediate response. The junkie usually took his phone with him when he ran but it would be on silent in his pocket. 

“No.” Kevin sounded offended and Andrew resisted the urge to smirk. “It’s just still early, and I don’t want to hang out in the hotel room all night.”

“You want to get drunk, you mean.” There was no judgement in Andrew’s voice, just fact. He ignored the scathing look the striker shot him. 

“Actually, there’s a sports center with a full exy court. I thought we--”

“No.” Andrew’s phone had begun to ring and he looked down at it, not sure why he was surprised to find that it wasn’t Neil. Of course it wasn’t Neil, the junkie was still probably out on his run.

It was Aaron. Well, _he_ was certainly one of the last people he expected to hear from today -- what with him getting the house all to himself this weekend to romance his girlfriend.

“Andrew, we missed practice on Friday. We should--”

This time, Andrew cut him off by answering the phone. He didn’t really care why Aaron was calling, but it was probably better than listening to Kevin try and bitch him into more exy.

“If you are calling to cry to me about Katelyn dumping you, I am not interested in comforting you,” he deadpanned. 

There was a brief pause, and then:

“No, Andrew…” The hesitance wasn’t what set Andrew on high alert. Aaron’s voice was tight and heavy with anxiety. If Aaron had been calling about wrecking the car or blowing up the house there would be a mix of temper and trepidation in his voice, probably masked behind a paper-thin attempt at casual nonchalance -- ready to defend himself and to downplay it as much as possible. But Aaron wasn’t tiptoeing around something to spare himself, Andrew could hear it in his voice, he was _bracing_ to be able to deliver dangerously unpleasant news. 

Andrew’s mind was already racing, but before he could allow himself to focus on the worst-case scenarios he gritted out a sharp, “What happened?”

He heard Aaron take a breath in. “Neil doesn’t have any brain or spinal injuries.”

Andrew sat up, his fingers curling so tightly around the body of his phone that he could feel the plastic shift and creak against his palm. Across the room, Kevin made some sort of curious noise but Andrew’s entire focus was hanging on the voice on the other side of the line.

“What the _fuck_ happened, Aaron?” He hadn’t meant to, but the question came out as a half-growled shout, like the tension in his body caused by his brother’s last statement had snapped the second he’d opened his mouth.

“Shit. No, Andrew. I mean. Look, we got a call from Josten. All he was able to say was that he needed us to meet him at the hospital, then an EMT took over and asked us about his medical history, which neither me nor Katelyn could fucking answer. I don’t know why your stupid boyfriend called me but now we’re at the hospital waiting for him to get out of surgery.” 

No. _No._ This wasn’t happening. This _couldn’t_ happen. He wasn’t stupid enough to think that it was over -- Neil was still indebted to the fucking _Japanese mafia_ and his life was riding on whether or not he was able to play well enough throughout college to snag a pro contract -- but nothing was supposed to happen _now_. Neil still had time. Andrew had time. _They had time._ Even if they had nothing else but each other and time, at least with that… they had something. He had to believe that. 

“What hospital? What happened? What the _fuck_ happened? _Tell me what happened to him._ ” He didn’t remember standing but he was launching himself across the room, ripping Kevin’s phone off the charger and swiping it open to start looking up plane tickets. He didn’t even _register_ if the other man was still nearby, if he was saying anything to him. It felt like a swarm of angry hummingbirds had taken over his blood, charging through his veins, moving his limbs and supercharging the beat of his heart until all he could hear was the rapid flutter of their wings in his ears. 

Neil’s name was a gasp caught in his chest that his lips were struggling to give space to.

“Hey, it’s going to be alright,” came Aaron’s voice, the tone lower, calmer. “Look, we just got done talking to the doctor. He’s in surgery now but they expect him to get through it just fine.” 

The only reason he was able to focus on his brother’s voice at all was because he _needed to know_ things that only that voice could tell him. The shift in tone had him forcing himself to pause. He took a slow, shaky breath that almost freed the gasp lodged in his throat. 

“He was hit by a car while he was out running earlier tonight,” Aaron was saying now, still in that slow, calm tone. Andrew clung to it -- borrowing the steadiness until he could find his own. “Both his legs are fine but he fractured his pelvis and a few of his ribs are worse for wear, along with several pulled muscles. We asked the doctor about recovery and he said he’d give us more information when Neil was out of surgery but it looked good that he’d be able to make a full recovery.”

Andrew closed his eyes. Around him, the hotel room gradually returned. Reality became physical again, a place and a time -- too far away and too late to do anything for Neil, but that cold hard truth was just one he was going to have to accept. Next to him, he could sense Kevin, staring at him intently and when he looked up he could see that the striker’s green eyes were wide, his mouth tightly set in a prelude to panic.

That, more than anything else, helped Andrew take the buzz of inconvenient feelings and ball them up, shoving them far away for the time being. It wasn’t easy to do. Neil had this annoying habit of getting under his skin even _before_ Andrew had decided to permit it. Now… well, apparently, _feelings_ were only exacerbating the issue. But he _and_ Kevin couldn’t freak the fuck out, not if he wanted to get the information he needed.

“Andrew, listen to me. Katelyn and I are going to stay here at the hospital and I’ll call you as soon as I have more information, alright? You’ll know everything that’s going on as soon as I do.” It said something to his and Aaron’s relationship, and even his begrudging tolerance of Katelyn, that the idea of them staying at the hospital was a somewhat soothing one. If he couldn’t be there, at least Aaron was. And Katelyn was Neil’s friend -- the only other person in their circle who spoke ASL well enough to converse. At least if Neil came out of surgery and woke up before Andrew got there, he wouldn’t be alone.

Andrew allowed himself a few slower, deeper breaths before he finally responded. “I will be on the first plane out.” It was a promise and an admission that went beyond the words themselves, one he knew his brother would understand.

“Alright,” Aaron said with a quiet sigh. “If you’re in the air when I get more info and you don’t pick up I’ll send everything I know in text so you’ll get it as soon as you land.”

“Right,” Andrew said tightly after he realized that his twin couldn’t see his nod. “As soon as I have a flight I’ll text you the details.” He was looking back down at Kevin’s phone again, waking it up to return to his search. 

“And I’ll make sure Neil knows you’re coming.” Aaron was… reassuring him, Andrew realized. A moment later, as if to prove his point, his brother continued with: “It’s going to be alright, Andrew.”

Andrew closed his eyes, he gave himself a moment to _attempt_ to believe it. Bee would tell him to hold onto the facts and not allow what he _didn’t_ know to weigh him down. She’d cite some sort of mental health creed or something, but Andrew knew the simple truth of it was that it if he let the unknown _weigh_ him down it would _slow_ him down and he just couldn’t afford that. 

Without responding to his brother, he hung up. After giving himself one more beat to think, he tossed Kevin’s phone to the tense striker staring at him from _way_ too close and opened the browser on his own phone. 

“Check for flights back to North Carolina. Non-stop. Leaving as soon as possible.” He kept his voice as low and steady as possible.

Kevin had caught the phone but he was slow to obey. Too slow, so Andrew snapped his fingers right in his face and ignored the scowl he got in return. “Hey. Trip is _over_ , Day. We are going back. Now.”

“Tell me what happened, first. Who’s in the hospital, Andrew? Was it..? Is my d-- is Coach okay?”

Andrew didn’t look at him. He was already scrolling through flight times. “Neil was hit by a car while he was out running.” He didn’t bother looking up at the alarmed (offended?) squawk that tumbled out of the striker, just continued to sort through potential flights on different airlines as he relayed what information Aaron was able to give him. 

Honestly, he thought he was keeping himself together pretty damn well. Not that he had any reason to fall apart. Neil had proven over and over again that, beyond being a fucking disaster magnet, he was resiliant as fuck. If the Ravens, the Japanese Mafia, and the Butcher of Baltimore couldn’t destroy Neil, no one could. If Neil was able to battle the ghost of his own mother to give himself permission to _live_ , he could handle a fucking car.

Right?

Except.

_Except._

Except Andrew knew what it was like to be _inside_ a car when the roads were slick and the wheels caught the edge of a median, causing the vehicle to fishtail and flip. He vividly recalled the bitter taste of mortality as it fought with his sense of triumph. He remembered the fear that he was about to die, a reflexive thing really, useless and bothersome and something he hadn’t really thought about since the adrenaline had been pumping panic through his veins like little shots of lightning. It was an easy detail to forget when he had the much more pleasant memory of knowing he’d succeeded -- that Tilda was _over_ , ended. It had cost him a broken arm, a concussion, and two fractured ribs but it had been more than worth it. 

A broken arm, a concussion, two fractured ribs -- and Andrew had been _inside_ the car. He’d been surrounded by life-saving metal. He’d been wearing his seat belt. 

He remembered watching Tilda, gasping and bleeding, shards of windshield scattered between them, and thinking that human beings were so… _soft_. So _breakable_. He knew this of course, even before the “accident”. He’d seen the red run deliberately from his own forearms, felt fingerprints become etched into his skin after too many nights where the soft mortality of humanity was more like purgatory in living skin. Something that hurt and hurt and never ended. 

So yeah, he’d known. But that was the first time he’d really realized that being soft and breakable and mortal and hurt wasn’t something exclusively his own. It was a flaw of every human with a pulse. 

He’d been inside the car. He’d been protected as best as he could. He’d been in the best position to survive, and he’d still gotten a broken arm, a concussion, two fractured ribs. 

Human beings were so _soft_. Soft, like Neil’s hair -- which was so damaged from all the dye over the years that it really had no right to be as soft as it was. It was damaged and broken, stripped bare and dyed over so many times you’d think that it would have lost its identity, it’s ability to ever grow its natural color again; yet since he’d come back from Evermore almost a _year_ ago now and his hair had grown and been trimmed more than once there had never been a shift in the color. His natural auburn, rich and soft and stubborn and… _Neil_.

Human beings were so _soft_.

Andrew had been in the car. He’d been protected. He’d still gotten hurt. His arm, a concussion, two ribs. 

Neil’s smile, the blue of his eyes, warming and so… so _soft_ whenever he saw Andrew enter the room. 

If Andrew had walked away from a collision with a broken arm, a concussion, two fractured ribs, when he’d been wearing his seatbelt, _protected by the shell of the car_ , when he was such a soft and human thing -- what about _Neil?_

What about Neil?

Soft, human Neil. 

Soft, human, hurting, smiling, struggling, stubborn Neil. 

What about Neil?

_What about Neil!?_

“Andrew. _Andrew!_ ” The voice was loud, too loud, too close, but Andrew couldn’t seem to catch his breath to snarl a warning at whoever was stupid enough to get in his space. He couldn’t seem to control his hands to go for his knife.

All of a sudden he crashed back into his body. He was shaking, clutching himself as he gasped for breath over and over again, his lungs an exhausted vacuum unable to retain anything he filled them with. Spots of black and gold danced in his vision and he dimly realized there was a shadow looming over him, too big and too close. He was on the ground, he realized. Somehow he’d ended up with his back wedged into the corner of the room, his knees tucked up to his chest and his fingers putting bruises in his upper arms. It was a familiar position, ideal for small children who needed to hide in even smaller spaces -- like cabinets and the back corners of a cluttered closet. It was a reflex he’d thought his body had forgotten. 

Apparently, it hadn’t.

“Andrew! Fuck. Breathe. Just… _breathe._ Come on just… with me, okay? Breathe with me.”

The shadow got smaller? No, not quite, but it was shrinking. A vague shape was now lumped in front of him instead of looming over him and the smallest bit of pressure eased off the panic button on his pulse. Someone was sitting across from him, he realized. Breathing. Talking to him. 

“In… two… three… Come on, Andrew…” 

Slowly, with effort, Andrew, stumbled through a breath. Then another, and another. As he did so, his vision began to clear and the world around him shifted back into focus. The shadow in front of him was Kevin, his expression serious despite the wideness around his eyes that told Andrew he was probably only keeping his shit together because Andrew was falling apart. 

That thought was _just_ irritating enough that Andrew was able to grit his teeth and force himself through another long, slow breath. There was no way in hell he was going to allow _Kevin-fucking-Day_ to be the most mentally stable person in the fucking room. 

It took more effort than he would ever be willing to admit to unlock his muscles and unfold himself from the corner. He fought against his instincts and opened himself, stretching his legs out in front of him and pressing his palms into the floor to either side of his hips, his head tilting back to leave his throat exposed. He breathed through it, ignoring Kevin in favor of a perfect-recall version of Bee, gently talking him back from a violent memory. 

It had been a long time since he’d had a panic attack like this. A _very_ long time. 

When he was ready, he dropped his head back down and opened his eyes, looking around the room. The small trash can that had previously occupied the space between the desk and this corner was on its side halfway across the room, probably kicked there during his initial retreat. He didn’t remember that happening. Damn. His phone was on the floor near the bed he’d been standing near before the episode. Kevin’s was on the bed, likely tossed there when the striker realized something was happening. 

And then there was Kevin. 

He was still sitting on the floor, though he’d moved to the side and was now leaning against the wall several feet away, watching Andrew like he was about to go off again. 

Andrew rolled his eyes and pushed himself up to his feet smoothly, if only because he allowed himself to move slowly. “I am not about to explode.”

“What the fuck was that about?” Kevin demanded with far too much concern, lacking his usual domineering arrogance. 

“You of all people should be able to recognize a panic attack, Kevin,” he reproached dryly in response. A panic attack that Kevin had just helped to bring him down from, but he wasn’t quite ready to acknowledge that just yet.

“Yeah, but… _why?_ ” Kevin was scrambling to his feet, baffled and lost and starting to get worked up again, angry _because_ he was confused and Kevin didn’t handle confusion very well. 

Andrew took a deep breath and bent over to swipe his phone up from the ground, sitting on the edge of the bed as he checked it over to make sure it hadn’t been broken. “Kevin, I just found out my partner is in the hospital after getting hit by a car. Why do you _think?_ ” He wanted to call Bee. He wanted to call _Neil_ , even though he knew that he wouldn’t get an answer. It was an itch under his fingernails, strong enough that he’d actually opened Neil’s contact before he stopped himself. He was on edge and admittedly not in the best headspace right now, but he _refused_ to allow himself to actually be _pathetic_.

“O-oh.” Yeah. _Oh._ Andrew didn’t even bother rolling his eyes this time, he just ignored the giant moron in favor of tapping back over to the browser on his phone and returning to his search for plane tickets. 

After a moment he looked up to find that Kevin was still standing there, staring at him. Andrew narrowed his eyes. “Are you just standing there because you already found tickets or because you lost what few brain cells you still have left after one too many hits to your empty fucking skull?”

Kevin blinked, then scowled at him, but at least he didn’t attempt a retort. What was better, he stalked toward the bed and had his phone in his hand in the next few seconds. Once Andrew was sure the oaf was actually being fucking _useful_ for once, he looked back at his screen and continued scrolling.

Within twenty minutes they’d found the soonest, most direct flight and were gathering their things to head to the airport.

*****

The flight itself was long and boring. He tried to read but the words kept swimming off the damn page, his mind dragged back down to the world below and it was impossible to concentrate. Any attempt at homework resulted in the same lack of productivity. At least Kevin was in a completely different section of the plane and he wouldn’t have to listen to him blathering on about exy for the entire four hours and fifty-seven minutes they were in the air.

In the end, he put on an audiobook and stared resolutely at the back of the seat in front of him until the plane finally began to descend. At that point the small windstorm churning in his stomach began roaring all the way up in his ears to the point where he couldn’t even hear his book anymore. At least the instinctive, sinking dread that they were plummeting from the sky and about to crash splendidly was preferable to the gnawing worry and associated helplessness that came with thinking about Neil. 

As soon as the plane touched down he was switching his phone out of airplane mode, staring at the screen as it synced up. Messages flooded in before they’d fully stopped and while he registered the multiple senders he went directly to the message thread between him and his brother. Aaron’s last message was to let him know that he was on his way and would be waiting for them outside in the car when the plane arrived, but the one before that was the one he read at least six times before it sank in.

**Aaron**  
_Neil is out of surgery and stable. Renee made sure we could stay with him tonight. Katelyn and I are with him now._

Andrew wasn’t prepared for the punch of relief that emptied his lungs with each reread of the text. Relief that Neil was out of surgery. That he was _stable_ \-- which he supposed was doctor-speak for “fine”, or “fine as can be”. Relief that Aaron and Katelyn were with him when Andrew couldn’t be. It was a weird moment to realize that he trusted them, but he couldn’t really ignore the sentiment once he’d recognized it. Aaron would make sure no one would try to fuck with Neil and Katelyn would be there for the idiot when he woke up, if he woke up before Andrew got there. Katelyn genuinely cared for Neil in the same way that Neil cared for his foxes. They were… friends. Beyond that, she had also been helping both of them with their ASL since October and he knew that having someone else who could sign would help Neil if he woke up and was too jarred to speak. 

Once he’d allowed that message to soothe the last of the hackles that had been raised on the back of his neck since before he’d boarded this wretched flight, he allowed himself to look through the other messages. 

Some were expected:

**Renee**  
_I know it’s impossible, but try not to worry. We are all here for both of you. Neil is strong, and he’s got you. It’s going to be alright._

**Nicky**  
_andrew, i kno its so scary but pls dnt kill any1 on ur way back to NC ok!?  
i mean that w/love  
we’re all gunna take turns keeping him company, ok? our neilbaby is gunna b ok!  
rembr u can count on me ok?  
i kno im a spaz but ill do anything 4 u guys, u kno that  
love u_

Others were less so:

**Boyd**  
_hey man, if you need anything or Neil needs anything just let me know. If he needs space or company even, just say it. I’ll follow ur lead and make sure the others do too if I can_

**Cptn Wilds**  
_I know that this is fucked up and kinda terrifying but we’re a team and we’ll all be there for each other. Neil is fucking strong and we’ll all be there for him through his recovery! You can count on us._

And then there was the bizarre:

**Exy Barbie**  
_Look Monster, I’m still going to cut that boy’s hair and you *better* make sure he doesn’t use a dumb car accident as an excuse not to wear those new jeans that make his ass look fucking amazing.  
If he even *looks* like he’s going to relapse back to his Hobo Chic thing you and I are going to have words._

Andrew rolled his eyes and switched back to the conversation with Aaron, shooting him a quick message to let him know that the plan had landed and they were pulling up to the gate. If he reread the confirmation that Neil was out of surgery and doing as well as he could be just _one more time_ there was no one around to judge him for it. 

Because Kevin had been seated further up on the plane than he’d been, the sullen behemoth was already waiting for him by the time Andrew stepped into the gate. Their eyes met briefly and then they were both striding through the airport toward the Arrivals exit. He sent a text to Aaron and a few minutes later the car pulled up. Kevin didn’t even whine about getting in the back, so apparently he _was_ capable of learning. 

“How bad is it? Will he be able to play?” The demand was insistent and arrogant, because even if Kevin could learn _some_ things he was still a fucking moron. When Aaron didn’t answer him right away, the striker made an annoyed buzzing sound from the backseat. “Aaron, come on. This is important.”

Sparing only a brief glance into the rearview, Aaron just continued to ignore him as he put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb. Andrew also wanted to know the details but he was bitter enough about Kevin bringing fucking _exy_ into the conversation _already_ that he kept silent. Oddly enough, he found that he trusted Aaron to tell him what he wanted to know without him having to ask.

Once they got on the highway, he was proven correct as Aaron took a slow breath and finally spoke. 

“The doctor said that he’ll have at least a six to eight week recovery,” he said in that same level calm he’d used on the phone, “because of the bone fractures. Otherwise, there’s no reason he shouldn’t be able to play normally for the rest of the season.” As much as he hated to admit it, he was grateful for that last bit as well -- and just just because it was something to shut Kevin up. He wasn’t stupid enough to think that ‘when can I play?’ wasn’t going to be Neil’s very first fucking question the moment he woke up. Neil loved the damn game to a _fault_ , and serious injury was a very real fear of his even if his stupid rabbit wasn’t willing to admit it -- and not just because he probably wouldn’t know what to do with himself if he couldn’t play exy. Kevin _did_ have a point with how much he harped about being perfect on the court, not that Andrew would ever, _ever_ give him that validation.

Because if Neil didn’t play, if he _couldn’t_ play to the height of his ability? The Moriyamas would probably just kill him. Andrew had to believe that he’d never allow that to happen, but mortality was a very sensitive topic right now and one he didn’t want to think about. 

Aaron glanced over at him as they drove down the barren highway, and when Andrew met his gaze he said: “He looked rough, though. So be prepared for that.”

 _Rough._ He might scoff at the descriptor, if he had the energy, and if Aaron hadn’t been there when Neil had come back to them after the shit that went down in Baltimore. Aaron had seen his share of shit, both in the mirror as gifts from mommy dearest as well as on the exy court. He’d also _seen_ Neil when he’d come back. If he could look him in the face with graveyard eyes and call Neil _rough_ now, Andrew knew to listen to him and brace for it. 

Andrew might have refrained from comment, but Kevin made a strangled sound from behind them. “Six to eight weeks? He’ll miss the first few games of the season. He’ll be incredibly behind. He--”

“Kevin.” Andrew spoke quietly, but he didn’t attempt to hide the warning. The last thing Neil needed were reminders of what could happen if he _did_ fall behind. He was going to work himself into a frenzy on his own over the next two months, he sure as fuck didn’t need Kevin’s help. The only thing that was going to happen as a result of Kevin’s repetitive reminders would be Neil’s only mental deterioration and he had enough shit to deal with. 

There was no way he could take it all on at the same time. He needed to focus on his recovery first, and Andrew would make sure he did that. Kevin would only make that infinitely harder for all of them if he pushed like he was wont to do. 

Kevin apparently realized this, because instead of any number of protests he could have made or reminders he could have tossed around about the Moriyamas or the season or whatever, he only said: “We’ll get him through it.” What was more, he sounded fucking sincere, and if it were any other situation Andrew might make his approval of the striker’s maturity known through mockery and a bottle of vodka.

For all that the five-hour flight seemed to have taken three fucking days, the twenty-minute drive to the hospital was even longer. Andrew spent the time staring out the window or watching the dim orange of the dash clock shift number by number, evidence that time was positively _crawling_ even if Aaron was more or less flooring it all the way back. Just as they were finally pulling into the hospital parking lot, Aaron’s phone buzzed from where it was sitting in the cupholder between them. 

It took all his self-control not to reach for it. It was almost four in the fucking morning, which meant than any text Aaron was getting was probably about Neil. 

His brother looked at the text only when they’d all piled out of the car and were starting to walk up to the front doors. Andrew stared at him, waiting for the answer to the question he knew he didn’t have to fucking ask. 

“It was Katelyn,” Aaron explained -- but that wasn’t what Andrew wanted to _know_. What he fucking _needed_ to know. He didn’t realize he was staring at the phone still sitting innocently in his twin’s hand until his brother continued and Andrew had to glance up to look him in the eye. 

“Neil’s awake.”

Something heavy unfurled wings inside his chest cavity. Andrew spoke around the bones getting caught in his throat. “Where?”

“Come on, I’ll take you,” Aaron said with a nod toward the hospital and they started to move again.

The flight had been five hours that might as well have been five days, the drive twenty minutes that might as well have been five hours, but the climb to the third floor of the hospital blurred. One moment they were in the parking lot and the very next they were approaching a nondescript door at the very end of a sterile hallway. Andrew was brushing past his brother almost before Aaron had finished pushing open the door. 

Neil was sitting up on the bed, awake, _alive_. His hands were moving, his eyes…

Hearing them enter, Neil turned to look at them and Andrew got to watch that familiar dance across his partner’s face -- the shift from wary and guarded to softer, warmer, _affectionate_ that always happened whenever it was discovered to be Andrew who had intruded. Even the bruises and cuts that marred Neil’s already scarred face couldn’t distract from the goddamn beauty of that welcome. Sharp, glacial eyes that should be able to pierce stone soothed the ruffled feathers in his chest. The soft lines around Neil’s generous mouth somehow managed to talk down the claws dug deep into his belly until they were only scraping the surface of his anxiety. The naked _relief_ that Neil wore at seeing him was a balm to the protective fire roaring in his blood. 

He was here. It was going to be okay. 

Andrew was beside the bed without having catalogued the journey, and he didn’t look away from Neil even as Katelyn rose from the chair she’d been posted in. It put her more inside his space than he’d ever permitted before but for some reason it didn’t set off any of his usual alarms -- either because he’d subconsciously accepted her far more than he realized or he was just that focused on Neil. 

“He just woke up. I explained what the doctor told me about expected pain and just to call the nurse if he needs anything, but he should still be okay for a while yet. The call button is right here on the side of the bed.” He finally broke his gaze away from Neil long enough to follow her gesture to the round red button she was indicating. He didn’t bother actually responding to her, though, not more than a short nod.

Katelyn, because she apparently had more sense than most, didn’t say anything else and moved away. Andrew immediately took her place, slotting into the space right beside the bed where she’d been standing. 

Careful not to jostle the bed, he lowered himself to sit on the edge, twisting his body to face Neil where he was sitting propped up against the pillows. This close, he couldn’t help but notice the tapestry of injury across his face, but he was honestly unmoved by it. Aaron hadn’t been wrong, he did look rough, but the stippling of blood and bruising on his face was nothing compared to the deliberate destruction he’d been covered in after Baltimore. He looked like he’d been in a car accident… or like he’d gotten the shit beaten out of him, he supposed. That wasn’t all that unusual, either. Neil was a fucking instigator, especially on the court, and the only thing that saved him from looking like this after every game was probably the helmet he wore while dashing belligerently around the other team’s defensive line. 

No, he wasn’t moved by the physical evidence of the accident painted across his face. It was the tight, barely-contained panic in his _eyes_ that had Andrew reaching forward. When Neil was pulled outside of himself by the cacophony of things outside his control, Andrew often gripped the back of his neck to give him a steady weight to help the other man anchor himself. Right now Neil wasn’t the only one who needed to be grounded, though, and Andrew… Andrew needed more than that. 

So he reached forward with both hands and gently cupped Neil’s face, palms barely brushing his skin until he felt Neil sigh and lean forward into the touch. His thumbs lightly grazed the crests of his cheeks as he searched his eyes, knowing that Neil could see the anxiety in him as well as he could read his rabbit’s. 

This had scared both of them, and the bubble of panic in his chest hadn’t quite gone away. Andrew tried to fight it, tried to shove it down, but he knew that Neil was watching, and he knew that Neil could read it when he felt the light brush of fingertips to the back of his hand. His lungs were tight, overfilled, stretched to their limit with the mix of breath and fear and the barbed feathers of his worry where they’d shed, stuffing every empty space inside of him until there was nothing left even for anger. 

Fingertips, light and gentle, brushed over his hair. A moment later, Neil’s fingers sifted through it more firmly and _just like that_ the tightness eased enough for him to breathe. 

He took in a breath. Slow, shaky, deep. Neil’s fingers kept moving through his hair and Andrew closed his eyes on a sigh, sagging forward so that their foreheads rested together. A moment later strong, slender fingers curled lightly around the back of his neck in a mirror of the anchor he so often gave to the striker, except instead of just resting there he felt a tug and when Andrew followed it he felt Neil pull him in close. The reassuring scent of _Neil_ flooded his senses along with the steady, even beat of his partner’s pulse against his temple. 

Another slow, steady breath, this one filled with Neil and only Neil. The rest of the world fell away, leaving him with the simple, unyielding truth of the man wrapped around him like a blanket and a shield. 

Andrew would be irritated about that later. Neil… that was so fucking… _Neil_ \-- to be hit by a fucking car and then turn around and comfort _him_ over it. Of fucking course. If there was anything Andrew was learning through this relationship it was that it was entirely fucking possible to be enamoured and annoyed about the same thing at the same time, mostly because that was basically his reaction to everything his stupid little rabbit did. 

Steadiness returned and Andrew slowly drew back on a freer breath. He cupped Neil’s face and kissed him. It was chaste, light, barely the brushing of their lips, but he needed to tell Neil that he was okay, that he was steady, and he also just… _wanted_ to kiss him. Small touches had become a part of the unspoken language they shared with each other, and he knew that Neil would understand. 

He felt it when Neil’s lips curved against his own, the smallest of smiles that Andrew didn’t need to see to know was filled with equal parts amusement and fondness. Instead of pulling away completely, Andrew kissed him again, just as light, right at the corner of his mouth where he knew the edge of that smile was tucked up just a bit higher than on the other side. Andrew liked kissing Neil’s smiles, even if those smiles were at his expense. 

(Maybe especially when they were.)

“What the hell am I going to do with you, Josten?” he asked on a sigh when he finally pulled back, dropping one hand but using the other to grip his partner’s chin.

Neil gave a small shrug and lifted his hands. Andrew wasn’t surprised when the striker responded in ASL. 

“Would you believe me if I said it wasn’t my fault? I was even wearing the reflective jacket Matt got me.”

Andrew gave him a dry look. “That really doesn’t make it better. If I cannot leave you alone for a damn weekend without you getting run over by a fucking car, what is going to happen when I graduate?”

It should say something about their relationship that Andrew found it both reassuring and far too attractive when Neil rolled his eyes and flipped him off in lieu of any other response. 

Neil pulled his chin free of Andrew’s grasp and Andrew let him. “It’s late,” Neil said next, and Andrew noticed that his hands were moving slower, weaker than usual. This was probably just because of the fatigue and the pain meds still in his system, but it still wasn’t something that made him feel all that great. “You should go get some sleep.”

It took Andrew a moment to realize that Neil was implying that Andrew should go back to fucking Fox Tower. Not giving a shit about the bruises already dotting the idiot’s face, Andrew lifted a hand and flicked him solidly in the forehead, ignoring the indignant sound of insult his stupid rabbit made in response and the accompanying middle finger jabbed at his chest. 

“Josten, I just flew across the fucking country to end up in this shitty little room. I am not going back to Fox Tower when I meant to be here. Hey,” he reached out and caught Neil’s face again, his palm a cradle to the side of his jaw this time when Neil’s mouth tensed and his hands lifted in preparation to tell him something stupid -- probably that he didn’t need to worry about him, that he didn’t need to do anything _for him_. “Listen, because I really do not like repeating myself. I am keeping you in my sight tonight, and I am staying in yours.”

It went unsaid that Neil hated hospitals and so Andrew hated any establishment run by organized authority. It went unsaid that neither of them was going to be able to sleep while separated, not tonight. It went unsaid that the only thing keeping the both of them together right now when they were both raw and sensitive to fear and the aftershocks of panic, was each other. 

Neil sucked in a slow breath, then his shoulders sagged and he nodded. Andrew studied him, just to make sure that he wasn’t going to push it, and when he was satisfied he dropped his hand and made to move from the edge of the bed to the chair. It wouldn’t be comfortable, but he’d slept in worse positions over the years. 

A light hand gripping his sweatshirt at the elbow without actually touching the arm beneath it had him pausing and he looked over when Neil tugged. When Neil carefully shifted over in the bed, Andrew understood what was being offered and he took a full minute to consider it before nodding and kicking off his shoes. Careful not to jostle Neil, he climbed into the bed beside him, laying on his side with one arm under Neil’s pillow and the other resting in the two inches of space between them. They were experts at this by now and the hospital bed was wider than a standard twin. Neil was narrow and with Andrew on his side it was a snug but comfortable fit for the both of them. 

He watched intently as Neil very gingerly adjusted on the bed, scooting down to be able to lay fully. He noted that the striker didn’t even attempt to lay on his side and he wondered if it was the heaviness of the fatigue or if the pain of a pelvic fracture was starting to creep in past the blockade of his pain meds. Neil didn’t comment or give any indication of pain, however, so Andrew decided to let it go for now. 

As soon as Neil was situated and they were both completely laying down, Andrew felt the crash coming. He held on for as long as possible, determined to keep his eyes open at least until he saw Neil drift off. In the end, he wasn’t sure if he succeeded and the last thing he remembered before exhaustion dragged him under into sleep was the feeling of Neil’s arm under his hand -- his own arm having moved almost of its own accord, needing to keep a physical tether as if to make sure that his rabbit could not be taken from him as they slept.


	2. going home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil gets discharged from the hospital and Andrew overhears an interesting conversation between Aaron and Neil. Oh, and there's some fluff too < 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello friends! I am so sorry about how incredibly long it’s taken to get this chapter out ^^; I hope you are still willing to read! Between the new job and finishing my fic for the AFTG Fall Exchange, I kinda had a lot on my plate. BUT! Things seem to be settling now. I still can’t promise a consistent uploading schedule, but I can promise that I am not abandoning the fic! I have scattered scenes written here and there and I do have it all planned out for the most part of all the scenes I wanna do. 
> 
> I SO appreciate all your support and comments and kudos! Don’t be a stranger, feel free to poke me over on Tumblr [@kiirynilcc](https://kiirynilcc.tumblr.com/) or here in the comments with any questions or whatever :) 
> 
> ((also, I'm sorry if there are any mistakes/typos/etc. I'm completely un-betaed over here and can't always catch my own mistakes on my edit readthroughs... ^^; ))
> 
> Chapter warnings: Flashbacks, depictions of death, depictions of a car crash.

_He was in the passenger seat and the world was too quiet. The silence was purposeful, heavy, suffocating. It lodged in his throat and flooded his lungs with the oppressive edict of inaction. Even though he could see the rain as it splattered against the windshield and he could feel the damp humidity in the car that was always inevitable because the air conditioning was one of the many things inoperational about the vehicular piece of trash, he could hear absolutely nothing._

_He turned his head and there she was, sitting in the driver’s seat, only one hand on the wheel as the other one waved about to emphasize whatever tyraid she was on this time. Andrew could hear none of it. Pale blonde hair hung stringy and lifeless around her face, her hazel eyes deep-set and darkly shadowed, the bones around her eyes too prominent and her teeth yellowed and caked with tartar._

_Andrew watched his own hand reach out. He watched the fingers curl around the wheel without her noticing. He felt the muscles of his arm bunch and tighten as he gave the wheel a sharp and sudden pull._

_Sound returned in cataclysm. Screeching tires, blaring horns, the thump of the median and the crunch of metal as the car tilted and swerved, fishtailing through traffic. Andrew braced himself; he was prepared for this. The front driver’s side wheel was going to come loose, the axel snapping, it would rip out the floor, and Tilda would be dragged under. She would not survive._

_But that’s not what happened._

_Instead the car tumbled until it hit something too small, something that shouldn’t have been able to stop the car but it did. When Andrew looked up to see what had stopped them, it was to stare into wide, empty blue eyes of the boy folded lifelessly over the hood of the car._

*

Andrew woke suddenly but without violence. His body stayed still as his heart attempted to launch itself free of his chest, growing fingers and claws in a vain effort to pry apart his ribs. Before he allowed himself a breath he was sitting up, too-wide eyes focused on the prone figure beside him as he reached forward and hovered two fingers under his nose. He counted five breaths before he allowed himself to believe the steady beeping of the heart monitor beside the bed.

Neil sighed and shifted beside him, wincing in pain as he roused from his own uneasy slumber. He took a deeper breath and Andrew was glad of it, even though he knew that Neil needed the rest. The image of Neil battered and still in a hospital bed was… 

Last night Aaron had used the word ‘rough’ and Andrew understood what he meant now. Perhaps he wasn’t as wrecked as he had been last spring, or even last winter, but there was something about him being motionless in a hospital bed that changed the context of the injuries, made them more grave. It was an image with irrefutable reality, one he wouldn’t soon forget. 

It was uncomfortable. Eerie. Disconcerting.

_Frightening._

He didn’t like it. 

Neil sighed beside him again and his eyes slowly opened, bleary with sleep and darkened with fatigue. He hummed, wordlessly, and lifted a hand to hover just beside Andrew’s cheek. Andrew didn’t hesitate in closing the distance and leaning into the contact. He needed it right now, and he was still shaken enough to admit it without resistance. He closed his eyes and took another slow, shaky breath as Neil gently brushed his thumb over his cheek. 

_Alive,_ he told himself. _Neil is alive. He’s going to be **fine**. Nothing is going to happen. I will not allow it. I will not allow him to be taken._

As if Neil could hear his thoughts, he hummed again, his other hand curling around where his own was a knotted fist in the bedsheets. He allowed Neil to pry his fingers gently loose and entwine them with his own instead. When he felt the dry, feather-light brush of lips against his knuckles he opened his eyes and looked into deep, understanding _blue_. It was a blue that was nothing like the blue from his dream. This blue was bright and alive. The blue of stars. The blue of life. The blue of ages and wonder and… Neil. 

_That_ blue had been the blue of endings. The vacant, chilling blue of death. 

Andrew took in a slow, deep breath and something inside him settled. He nodded, needing to let Neil know that he was alright.

Neil smiled tiredly against his knuckles and nodded, giving them another kiss. 

A sharp knock at the door wiped the softness from the striker’s expression and the hand against his cheek dropped while the one holding his tightened. Both of them looked to the door and watched as a short, stocky man with a round face and a neatly trimmed beard entered the room. He was wearing pale green scrubs and holding a clipboard, and he smiled far too warmly at them when he realized they were both awake. 

“Oh! I’m glad to see you’re both up. I’m Liam, your nurse. How are we feeling today?” Liam looked from Neil to Andrew and back again. 

Neil continued to watch the man in narrow-eyed suspicion as he gave a short, tight shrug. When he started trying to sit up, Andrew rolled his eyes but helped him before Neil could either embarrass or hurt himself in his attempt. 

Liam didn’t seem dissuaded by their general lack of friendliness. He just kept smiling and flipped to the first page on his clipboard. “Looks like you had an ordeal yesterday. Dr. Rookly will be by later to go through everything with you but I can reassure you that the doctors were able to put you all back together and with a careful recovery you should be right as rain again. How is the pain?”

Again, Liam looked between the two of them before settling his gaze on Neil.

Again, Neil shrugged -- though Andrew could tell from the tension in his body that whatever painkillers he’d been pumped with last night and this morning were starting to wear off. 

Andrew frowned at him and squeezed his hand to make his idiot look at him. With his free hand he signed, “One to ten. How bad?”

Neil shrugged and then gave an irritated sigh when Andrew squeezed his hand again. They glared at each other for a moment before Neil relented and raised his hand to give a hesitant sign of: “Four.”

Andrew scoffed and waited, not looking away until Neil rolled his eyes and corrected to: “Six. Happy?”

“So much.” He kept his expression utterly flat, because sarcasm was the only tone he could flawlessly convey in ASL. 

“Um… well. I’m so sorry, it wasn’t in his file that he was deaf. I can get an interpreter…?”

Andrew looked over at the nurse, who was now watching them with the apologetic uncertainty of someone who had no idea what the fuck they were supposed to do. 

“He isn’t deaf,” Andrew said in English, _just_ managing not to roll his eyes. The nurse looked confused but Andrew didn’t care. “I can translate if he has to say anything to you people,” he stated instead of elaborating as to why Neil wasn’t speaking. It didn’t have anything to do with why he was in the hospital and so it was none of their fucking business. 

“Ah, alright then. I’ll just… Mm, yes.” He made some sort of note on the file and then smiled at them again. “For now, is there anything I can get you?”

Neil sighed. He looked at Andrew and the flick of his hands was downright _petulant_ as he signed, “I don’t want to be here.”

“Too bad,” Andrew said aloud after a dismissive snort. Nurse Liam was giving him a curious look, awaiting a translation, and Andrew had half a mind to just ignore him and not translate at all. But he was similarly eager to get out of the fucking hospital. He wanted Neil safe and in their own space, back at the dorm or the house, where only their own people would potentially be wandering about, and only with express permission. There were too many eyes and hands here, too many things he could not control and it set him on edge. 

With that in mind, he fixed the nurse with a dead stare. “When can he leave?”

Nurse Liam appeared aggravatingly unperturbed by his intimidation tactics. He just kept _smiling_ with that soft, gooey understanding that made Andrew want to punch things because how the fuck _dare_ someone think they understood even an iota of what was going on with him, with Neil, or with the two of them together. 

“That will be up to the doctor, I’m afraid. But she can go over all of that with you when she comes by a little later. Now, how about something to eat, hm? I bet I can even swindle you guys some ice cream if jello doesn’t suit your fancy.”

Andrew glared at him. 

“Fine.”

*****

Neil spent three days in the hospital. It seemed all at once way too long and far too short, considering he’d been hit by a fucking _car_ and had sustained injuries serious enough to require emergency surgery, but Andrew wasn’t going to complain. The hospital was sterile and exposed and uncomfortable. He knew that the only reason Neil had been able to sleep at all was thanks to medication, and Andrew… well, he had an entire winter break to catch up on the sleep he wasn’t getting right now.

Neil hadn’t tried to tell him to leave him again, a rare show of brain activity from the idiot. Someone had dropped off his bag at some point, so he had some clean clothes with him, and Wymack had come through for the both of them by reaching out to both of their professors regarding finals -- which were taking place all this week. Andrew would be able to go to campus on Thursday and take all of his finals in one fell swoop, and Neil would be allowed to complete them remotely as long as he submitted them by the end of the first week of break. 

Neil didn’t appear to have much of an opinion other than that he very much wanted to _not_ be in the hospital anymore. Anytime someone came into the room he held up the pad of paper where he’d written ‘ _when can I leave?_ ’ in scrawled, sharp letters and frowned at whomever it was. 

He hadn’t spoken at all since the injury.

Instead, he and Andrew had spent the last few days watching videos on Andrew’s laptop and going through some of the more advanced courses of their ASL program. Well, in between various tests and scans that Neil was subjected to in order to make sure his injuries weren’t going to leave lasting damage. Neil did a lot of fitful napping, as well, and Andrew was eager for them both to be able to leave this fucking hospital and get back to the house in Columbia where Neil wouldn’t have to be poked and prodded and they could both get some real fucking _rest_.

It was afternoon on the third day when that release finally seemed imminent. 

Dr. Rookly was a round-faced, dark-skinned woman who stood an inch shorter than Andrew himself and looked like she could probably lay the Coach out with minimal effort. She was decidedly no-nonsense without being condescending and Andrew found that he rather approved. Well, as much as he _could_ approve of a doctor.

“I’m going to be completely frank with you, Mr. Josten -- you were _incredibly_ lucky. You’ve been recovering more quickly than we anticipated, even in the last few days, and the fracture on your pelvis isn’t as severe as we first thought it was. That being said, the internal damage was substantial and surgery itself is hard on the body. Soft tissue heals more quickly than bone, but _only_ if you allow it to.” She narrowed her eyes at Neil, like she had a preternatural sense for patients who tended to push themselves when they shouldn’t. Andrew was impressed. 

“I understand that you are a student athlete, and you are about to go onto your winter break. This is good. Use that break to _rest_. Allow your body to heal. Do not push yourself. When the school year rolls around again, _do not overexert yourself_. Right now, I am going to officially advise a six-week leave for you from your sport.”

Andrew felt Neil stiffen beside him and he turned to look. 

His jaw was tense, his eyes narrowed -- a mask of anger to hide his fear. Neil lifted his hands and signed slowly. “Six weeks? Can it be sooner?”

Andrew snorted and rolled his eyes. _Junkie._ Still, he relayed the question. 

Dr. Rookly raised one perfectly shaped dark brow. “I am not going to make any promises to you. It’s honestly far more likely that you’ll need closer to eight weeks before I’m going to allow you back on that court.”

“No.” Neil’s hand snapped the argument out. He shook his head for emphasis, his brows drawn tight together and his teeth gritted. “I can play.”

Andrew watched him, his own stare heavy, seeing the desperate pleading beyond the sharp, insistent movements. He didn’t translate right away, though he suspected the doctor could figure it out for herself. Instead, he kept his gaze steady on Neil. He raised his hands to get his attention, and when he had it, he signed, “Rabbit.”

Neil met his gaze and swallowed thickly. He glanced quickly at the doctor, then back to Andrew before lifting one hand and making the letter ‘m’, his blue eyes wide and angry in a way he only got when he was scared. 

He didn’t need Neil to spell out the full word to know that Neil was thinking about the pressure from the Moriyamas -- about what the reaction might be from them if he didn’t return to the court at the beginning of the season. About what their reaction might be if this injury set him back and impacted his performance for the _rest_ of the season. 

Andrew had been thinking about it for three days straight, so he didn’t need more than that one letter and the anxiety clawing its way out of that fathomless blue for him to connect the dots. 

Instead of responding with reassurances or a dismissal, Andrew gave a sharp expression that was less of a grin and more of a baring of teeth -- a protective, confident sneer. 

_I will not allow them to fucking **touch** you,_ the bite of his teeth and the focus of his eyes conveyed. He saw Neil reading that promise in his expression, saw him worry about the consequences. Saw his rabbit panic, saw the temptation of that fucking martyr complex he had tugging on his conscience. Instead of addressing it here or discussing the matter any further, Andrew lifted a hand and signed a sharp, decisive, “Later.”

Neil studied him, then nodded. There was a stubborness in his eyes that told Andrew they were going to argue, but he didn’t really care. The important thing right now was that the doctor was going to allow Neil to check out of the hospital today and the warnings she was giving about Neil taking it easy were to be fucking _obeyed_. 

Andrew gestured to the doctor to direct Neil’s attention. He ignored the curious look she was giving them. 

“He understands,” he said aloud instead. “What else do we need to know?”

Dr. Rookly hummed, then continued, addressing the both of them. “I’m prescribing two weeks worth of the pain pills we have you on right now. I’ve included one refill but if you end up needing more you can contact us here. I’m advising bedrest _at least_ until Friday, but after that if you’re feeling up to it it’s okay to move around. Don’t push it, and if you feel significantly increased pain from moving around, then stop. Nothing more strenuous than walking around. If you have to climb more than five or six steps, take the elevator, do you understand?”

Neil glared at her, but he nodded with a sigh that this side of dramatic. 

The doctor was completely unbothered by Neil’s petulance. “Good. If you do end up falling, or experiencing a sudden increase in pain, you are to return to the hospital immediately so we can make sure your fracture hasn’t worsened.”

Another sigh, another reluctant nod. At this point, the doctor looked to Andrew and he gave her the confirmation she needed. “If he is that stupid I will make sure he comes back to the hospital.” 

This time Neil glared at him, and he met the expression with an unimpressed stare. 

Apparently satisfied, Dr. Rookly nodded and jotted down a few more things on her clipboard. “Alright then. I’ll start the process to get you released. Are there any more questions?”

Both of them shook their heads. The doctor waited a beat longer, then left with a final nod.

*****

Home was a concept that Andrew hadn’t permitted himself in a very long time. It was a trap, after all. The moment you started to think ‘ _this could be it_ ’ was the moment you got fucked sideways so hard you ended up with whiplash.

Then came the house in Columbia, where he was living with his cousin and his brother. By that point he’d been determined not to care. It was not going to be a home to him. He had made his promises and he was going to see them through, that was all. It was better than the alternative, that was all. It was a place to sleep, a place to eat, but it could not fulfil the requirements of a _home_ because by that point Andrew knew better. No place could actually be _safe_.

Then Nicky came home from work after they’d been living there for a few weeks with new door knobs for him and Aaron. Ones that would lock. After a brief war of shock, wariness, and relief, Andrew had demanded an answer: _Why?_ There was no way Nicky could _know_. Luther hadn’t fucking believed him and even if he had, he highly doubted he would have told his estranged son. So _why?_

But Nicky had only smiled, had shrugged, and had said that they both deserved their privacy. There had been a story there, but Andrew had never asked for it. Instead he’d only nodded and let Nicky finish installing the knob, watching as his cousin left both copies of the key on his dresser before moving on to install Aaron’s. 

They’d never spoken about it, what that locked door meant to Andrew. For a long time Andrew hadn’t even acknowledged it to himself. He’d shoved that understanding deep, deep inside himself where it couldn’t chip away at the cracks in his armor.

Then came a man who was really still a boy, and he’d given that boy a key. 

Now that boy was standing in front of the door with that key in his hand. Andrew waited patiently, watching carefully. Neil was looking down at that key in his hand like it was going to tell him a secret, one he’d been waiting to learn his entire life. Contrary to popular belief, he and Neil didn’t _actually_ read each other’s minds, and he wasn’t sure what was going on inside of the other man’s head right now. He wasn’t distressed, but he was… solemn. Andrew let him have his moment.

Personally, Andrew was less concerned about Neil’s headspace than he was the tender way he still held himself. The doctors had cleared him to walk short distances and he’d been bullied into some pain medication before they left the hospital, since the drive was a good forty minutes back to Columbia and sitting completely upright was one of the more painful positions for the idiot right now, but the last thing anyone needed right now was for Neil to lose his balance and toss himself off the front of the porch. 

So he waited, and maybe he hovered just a little bit.

When Neil finally let them into the house, he brought them straight back to Andrew’s bedroom. Andrew watched as Neil carefully toed out of his shoes and climbed onto his side of the bed, relaxing onto it with a heavy sigh. He watched as the tension slowly seeped out of him. He watched as he smiled, and it was a smile he had not seen in _days_. A soft, lazy, pleased smile that had his lips slightly parted and his eyes hooded, head tilted slightly back and to the side so he could watch Andrew right back. If Neil’s delight was the light, sweet sharpness of strawberry then his relaxed pleasure was the decadence of chocolate mousse. 

It was a smile that always hit Andrew in the gut and right now was no different. He was incapable of seeing that smile without wanting to kiss it, and his ability to resist the urge varied from situation to situation. He typically had less restraint in the early morning and late night, but he’d been known to spite himself just to prove he could. 

Now was one of the times that would have been more within his power to ignore that lazy, half-sleepy grin, and Andrew _was_ tempted to roll his eyes and order his idiot to get some sleep before the others came by tonight -- but…

Andrew liked to tell himself that he did not believe in regret. It was a useless emotion. It got you nowhere. In fact, if anything, it pushed you backwards. Regret was annoying at best and twisted and sadistic at its worst and, frankly, Andrew did not have time for it. Yet… In the quiet, sleepless times in these last few days, when Neil’s medication had allowed him to sleep and Andrew had found himself staying up just listening to the sound of his breathing and the steady chirp of the monitors around them, he’d had the thought more than once that if he’d lost Neil, maybe, _maybe_ , he would regret not kissing him more. Maybe, _maybe_ , he would regret the times where he denied the both of them contact that they both wanted just to prove that he could. 

At the airport, when Neil had dropped them off, there had been a moment -- just a brief one -- where he could tell that Neil had wanted to touch him. There had been a moment where Andrew had wanted to kiss him, because he wouldn’t be able to touch him or kiss him or see him for the next few days and a part of Andrew just _did not_ like that, so he’d wanted to… to bring some of Neil with him, even if only as a fleeting final touch. 

But the thought of wanting that, the thought of _needing_ that, had pissed him off. He was only leaving for a few days. The junkie would be just fine without some kind of Hallmark-knockoff _goodbye kiss_ or what the fuck ever. And so, the _fuck_ , would he. 

So he hadn’t. Neil had _looked_ at him with that fondness and that smile and that… well, in that _way_ that he did. Andrew had met his stare and scoffed, then he’d turned around and walked away. 

The next time he’d seen Neil was when his rabbit had been sitting in a hospital bed, bandaged and weak, signing with Katelyn. 

Andrew dropped his bag by the dresser and kicked off his own shoes, shutting and locking the bedroom door before joining Neil on the bed. He slid onto it carefully so that it wouldn’t jostle too much, coming right up to lay on his side beside Neil. The striker’s gaze followed him, his smile warm and sleepy and beautifully relaxed. It deepened when Andrew brought his hand up to his face, gently cupping his cheek and rubbing his thumb along the crease of that smile. 

“Yes or no?” Andrew murmured softly, seriously. 

“Always yes, Drew,” Neil hummed back at him, his lips moving against his still-stroking thumb, which he then gave a kiss. Such a small thing shouldn’t have shot through Andrew like a bolt of lightning, but it did. 

“Idiot,” Andrew scoffed. “You got run over by a car, Neil. You are exhausted and sore. Maybe making out isn’t what you want right now.”

“Mm, dunno, pretty sure it is.”

Andrew rolled his eyes, but there was a light feeling in his chest. Buoyant and bright. It felt like relief but also something else -- a warm and cozy thing, like hot chocolate and fireplaces; long midnight drives and locked doors; stargazing and the smell of new books. It was a feeling that combined bits and pieces of other welcome experiences, something that brought him peace and also had his blood heating at the same time. The only word he had for it was _Neil_ , and for now he would let that stand.

“You are so stupid.”

“Andrew, we’ve been over this.” Now Neil nipped at the pad of his thumb, lazy smile shifting into a smirk. 

Andrew didn’t bother to roll his eyes this time. Instead he leaned in and replaced the press of his thumb with the weight of his own lips. He kissed Neil slowly, deliberately -- or as deliberately as he _could_ kiss Neil. For something to be deliberate it had to be utterly under his own control, and when Andrew kissed Neil things like thoughts and decisions and logic and reason and _reality_ suspended almost entirely. The rest of the world melted away, and it was only… _this_. Mouth on mouth, breath in breath. It was the one time where Andrew’s mind was utterly, blissfully, blank. 

Even so, Andrew was able to keep enough of his wits about him to know when it was best to pull back. Neil was fresh out of the hospital and they were both exhausted. Dr. Rookly had also returned right before discharge to deliver a short, informative speech about sexual activity during Neil’s recovery and Andrew wasn’t about to push things even if all of his and Neil’s usual activities while fooling around were in the green- or yellow-light categories.

Oh, yeah. There had also been a handout. 

Neil made a soft sound of complaint when Andrew pulled back, trying to follow the kiss, but Andrew snorted and pushed him back down with a firm press of fingers to his collarbone. Neil didn’t resist, but he did _pout_ and Andrew refused to find it attractive. Instead, he leveled him with a hard stare until the idiot sighed and rolled his eyes. Then he adjusted himself on the bed a bit and opened his arms in question and in offering. 

Andrew stared at him, but only for a moment. Maybe if he were less exhausted, less mentally and emotionally drained, he would have a greater resistance to the notion. Or maybe his instinct to hesitate was wearing thin when it came to Neil. Maybe the idiot little rabbit had really gotten under his skin _that much_. 

Or maybe he was still just so fucking relieved that the idiot was alive.

Whatever it was, Andrew could pick it apart later. For now, he just sighed and put on a small show of acquiescence as he carefully arranged himself against Neil. He rested his head on his chest, his arm draped carefully over his waist, paying close attention to where he placed it to make sure there was no tension in the other man that might tell of tenderness. Once he was settled, he gave a small nod and then he felt the light touch across the back of his shoulders of Neil’s arm. When Andrew didn’t tense or verbally retract his consent, the weight increased until Neil was holding him. A moment later, long, skilled fingers started tracing through his hair.

Against his will, Andrew felt himself relaxing at a disturbingly rapid rate. His eyelids were drooping, he felt himself _sigh_. In _contentment_ of all the damnable things. It didn’t make sense. Andrew wasn’t supposed to know things like _comfort_ or _contentment_. These were concepts for other, softer people than himself. 

The peace did not seem to care about his preconceived notions of the working of the world, though, and it washed over him anyway. He fell asleep to the slow, steady beating of Neil’s heart.

*****

They slept for a few hours, solidly and deeply, without interruption either from their own minds or the outside world. When Andrew woke it was to a dark room and the steady breathing of the chest beneath his cheek. He took a deeper, more conscious breath and felt the body beneath his own shift slightly, the hand curled lightly around his shoulder lifting and pulling away as Neil woke as well and instinctively adjusted to give him space just in case he woke feeling trapped. This wouldn’t be the first time that they had lain together with Neil holding Andrew instead of the other way around, but they didn’t usually fall asleep that way and Andrew had been known to react defensively upon waking -- his body moving before his brain could catch up.

Andrew sighed, then gave a huff and turned his face against Neil’s chest, debating whether or not he actually wanted to get up. It was already night, and while he felt infinitely more human after some solid sleep he could also hear the quiet rustling that told of the others being in the house as well. This was not a surprise, as he’d known and had reluctantly agreed to allow the rest of Neil’s Foxes to come by the house to see him (as long as Neil was up for the interaction), but that didn’t mean it was _welcome_.

A small sound of pain from Neil had Andrew making up his mind, though, and he pulled away from the striker to sit up and look down at him. “You need to take your pain meds.”

In the dull glimmer of moonlight, Andrew saw Neil make a face in protest. “I really don’t. It isn’t that bad.” 

“You do realize that it is not the words “I’m” and “fine” that are the issue, right? It is their blatant falsehood.”

Neil rolled his eyes and went to push himself up into a sitting position with another poorly disguised grimace. Andrew let him struggle as punishment and instead slid off the bed and stretched before flicking on the small lamp by the bed and padding over to the dresser to pull out some fresh clothes for the both of them. Considering how grimy and more than a little bit gross he felt, Andrew decided to drape his own selection over his shoulder to take into the bathroom with him before tossing a loose black t-shirt and gray sweatpants onto the bed for Neil. The junkie could socialize with his teammates while Andrew got in a hot shower.

As Neil carefully stripped out of his shirt and pants and changed into the spares Andrew had tossed him, moving gingerly so as not to bend overmuch or put too much pressure on all his injuries, Andrew stripped off his armbangs and set them on top of the dresser. He returned to the bed only to help Neil with the pants, crouching down and holding them open for Neil to step into, then pulling them up to sit loosely about his narrow hips. They fit okay enough that they shouldn’t fall, but Andrew tied the drawstring just in case and folded up the tattered cuffs so he wouldn’t trip. 

He pointedly ignored the soft, gooey expression on the idiot’s face as he stood. “If you trip, I am not gluing you back together again,” he warned. 

Neil just _smiled_ , and Andrew retaliated with a mild poke to his side. It wasn’t over one of the broken ribs but there were plenty of bruises to choose from and it was satisfying to see the idiot wince. “Let them fuss. Eat something before you take the pills.”

Neil rolled his eyes but nodded. Andrew continued to stare at him until Neil sighed and swiped the pill bottle from the bedside table, gave it a shake, and shoved it into his pocket. Satisfied, Andrew nodded and led the way out of the room. They parted in the hallway, Andrew heading to the bathroom and Neil continuing on to enter the living room -- where a small explosion of relieved cheers could be heard upon his arrival. 

Once in the bathroom with the door securely locked, Andrew started up the water and then crouched down before the vanity and opened the cabinet, reaching all the way to the back to pull out a discreet black plastic bin about the size of a shoe box that had been hidden under a caddy of cleaning supplies. He’d only turned on one of the lights, electing to keep just the dimmer of the two on and thus also preventing the fan from clicking on as well -- since it was controlled by the same switch that also turned on the brighter overhead light in the middle of the ceiling. Long, steamy showers in a dimly-lit bathroom with the door locked were one of Andrew’s secret pleasures and after all the stress of the past few days he was fucking _entitled_ , thank you very fucking much. 

As the water heated, Andrew opened the bin and debated its contents. After a moment of thought, he selected the _Strawberry Apple Tart Sugar Scrub_ , the _Bella Voix Ultimate Hair Mask_ , and the _Rosewater and Ivy In-Shower Hydrating Facial Cleansing Mask_ before closing the box and setting it aside. He stripped down the rest of the way before taking his choices to the shower and arranging them on the edge of the tub. 

To be clear, Andrew did _not_ hide his self-care items in a black box under the sink underneath the cleaning supplies barely anyone ever touched because he was ashamed. He _hid_ them, because he had learned within two weeks of living with Nicky Hemmick that _nothing_ was safe from him. Andrew bought very few things for himself, so when he _did_ indulge, it was on something that helped him feel more in control of his own body. Something that cleansed his skin from a lifetime of filthy fingerprints. It was on something that let him take care of himself, and it was on really fucking expensive body care products that Nicky would use up in a fucking _weekend_ if he knew they existed. Hence why he didn’t even bother bringing anything like that to the dorms. But here, at the house, especially when it was just him and Neil? He could indulge a little bit then. Sometimes he was even generous enough to share with Neil. 

Tonight they were not alone in the house, but Andrew needed this -- and he was aware enough of himself to allow himself this comfort. 

So Andrew stepped under the hot shower and let his bones soak up the heat. He unscrewed the top of the jar of _Bella Voix_ and got some in both palms before distributing it through his hair, making sure to gently massage it into his roots and also fully coat the ends. Then he brushed the smooth, thick gel of the facial mask over his cheeks, chin, forehead and nose before beginning to slowly scrub himself down with the sugar scrub. He got his knees and his elbows, his shoulders and the back of his neck. He even sat down in the tub and leaned back to let the hot water cascade over him like volcanic rain as he breathed in the steam. 

By the time he had fully rinsed and shut the water off, the small bathroom was filled with thick steam and sticky heat. It was impossible to get dry enough to put his clothes on, something he probably should have thought about beforehand but could do nothing about now. He debated, then decided to cross the hallway in his towel (once he’d been sure to put away his body care products back in their box, tucked away in their hiding spot under the sink). Ten minutes (and some _Strawberry Kiss Body Butter_ later), Andrew was leaving his bedroom in fresh clothes. His armbands were in place, his hair damp and his whole body feeling… lighter. 

Andrew skirted around the living room without greeting any of the others therein, glancing in only long enough to note that Neil wasn’t among them. He didn’t think too much of it. No one seemed distressed at his absence, so he was probably off with one of the Foxes in another part of the house. Someone had made coffee, which was appreciated, and Andrew took the time to pour himself a mug before shoving his feet into his house slippers and pulling on his coat to head out onto the back porch for a smoke. 

He paused, however, when he saw that the door that led from the kitchen out to the porch was already open. Two shadows could be seen just past the door; one short and narrow, the other even shorter and broad.

Andrew frowned and took a step closer, then paused again as he caught the voices from the two outside.

“...call me?” Aaron.

A heavy pause, then:

“Who else would I have called?” _Neil._ His tone held an almost false lightness, and Andrew didn’t need to see the striker’s face to know that his blue eyes were steady and focused. Andrew had no doubt that Neil was watching Aaron for any hint of weakness, any twitch of expression or break in that tough-guy facade his twin clung to so desperately when faced with something he didn’t know how to handle. Neil was definitely something Aaron did not know how to handle. 

Aaron scoffed, and Andrew could hear the twist of a scowl in his voice. “Boyd. Reynolds. Any of the other Foxes. You’re their Golden Boy, they’d have dropped anything for you -- and they were _closer_. It was stupid for you to call me when you knew I was all the way in Columbia. Unless you were _trying_ to ruin my date night?”

“Oh, yes. Definitely. The whole point of me getting run over by a _car_ was to fuck up _your_ night,” Neil shot back dryly. “You caught me.”

Andrew should turn around and walk away or just commit to interrupting and go outside. He could even just go out the front door and smoke there. This conversation was between Aaron and Neil and had absolutely nothing to do with him, so he _should_ just let it be. It was none of his business, and yet…

And yet, he was curious, too. It hadn’t really occurred to him at all, but Aaron was right -- he’d even said it the night he’d called Andrew to tell him that Neil had been hurt. It made no sense that Neil had reached out to _Aaron_ of all people. Katelyn, maybe -- since the two of them were becoming pretty close friends and she was the only other person in their group who could speak ASL -- but not _Aaron_. Even though they’d been getting better over the past several months, they still seemed to barely tolerate each other. 

“Then why?” Aaron was demanding out on the porch. “What the fuck were you thinking? We aren’t friends, Josten.”

“No, we’re not,” Neil agreed, but his voice was quieter -- not in volume but in tone. There was a weight to it, too. Something heavy, something full. “I don’t know that I _was_ thinking,” Neil confessed several long, taffy-stretched moments later. “At least, not about me.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Aaron bit out. Neil must have shot him a telling look because Andrew heard his brother suck in a breath a moment later. There was a tense beat of silence, then an exhale. “Oh.”

Andrew had a feeling he knew what that _oh_ was about, and it twisted something inside his belly. A knife, plunged deep, blade sharp and catching on his organs as it twirled and cuddled up between his ribs. His hands tightened on the mug of coffee in his hands. 

“Yeah. _Oh._ ” Neil’s confirmation wasn’t mocking. 

“You really fucking care about him, don’t you.” Aaron said quietly, but despite the wording it was clear by his twin’s tone that it hadn’t been a question. 

If Andrew had been in a different frame of mind, he might have found it amusing -- or maybe vaguely insulting -- to hear the same questioning phrase, that same doubting arrangement of sounds and syllables, coming from his brother and aimed at Neil as it had been thrown at him from Boyd a few months ago. As it were, Andrew was still caught on the heavier implications that had just been dropped into the empty air around him. The clung, unverbalized, like spiders to a web, waiting to catch his tripping heart.

Unlike Andrew, Neil gave an answer.

“Yes. I do.”

Aaron’s tone was almost contemplative when he spoke next. “I told him so once, you know.” 

This time, Andrew didn’t stop himself as he stepped forward. He purposefully dragged his foot against the tile so it squeaked and pressed his hand to the storm door to push it open, cutting off Neil halfway through saying, “Told him what?” 

Neil’s expression was still drawn down in confusion, his head cocked, as he turned at the noise. That expression instantly melted away, though, when he saw him. Even after overhearing _that_ particular conversation, the feeling in Andrew’s chest was the same as he watched the rise of the sun find its path in the warming of Neil’s eyes and the softening of his smile. His breath caught, tripping over itself at the sight, and he had to force himself to narrow his eyes and glare. 

“I hate you,” he grumbled with as much menace as he could manage.

Neil just _smiled_. “I know.”

Aaron looked between them, then grimaced. “Gross. I’m going back inside. It’s fucking cold out here.” Andrew didn’t bother to take offense and instead stepped aside and held the door open for his brother to pass. As he did so, they locked eyes for just a moment. Aaron paused, then sighed and jerked his head toward Neil in was was probably some kind of begrudging acceptance. Whatever it was, Andrew met it with a blank stare and then a shrug -- then the moment was over and Aaron continued inside. 

Andrew let the storm door bang shut and turned now to his rabbit, who was studying him with thinly veiled consideration. Andrew gave _him_ a blank stare as well before taking a pointed drink of his coffee. Then he set his mug on the railing and shook out two cigarettes. He lit the first and passed it to Neil, then lit the second and took a slow, long drag. 

It was Neil who spoke first.

“So, how much of that did you hear?” Neil didn’t sound worried, just curious. 

Andrew debated for a moment, then looked over at the other man. “You never answered the question.”

“What question?”

“Neil.”

Neil sighed and turned around so that he could lean carefully back against the railing. Even with the painkillers he had to be careful where he applied pressure. “I thought I was going to be fine, really, at first. The guy hit me and it _hurt_ , but I’ve been hurt worse and still managed to play exy so…” He shrugged and Andrew felt his hand curl tightly around the handle of his mug, not appreciating the reminder -- not of Neil’s eventful little holiday trip to Castle Evermore nor of the fucker who’d mowed Neil down then had only stuck around long enough to anonymously call 911 before speeding off. The police had taken Neil’s statement that first afternoon in the hospital, which had been an event on its own, seeing as how Neil hadn’t been able to talk at the time, his words wrung dry for the entirety of his stay at the hospital. 

“Then, when the paramedics got there, they asked if I had anyone. By then…” Neil sighed and now Andrew got to watch as the other man’s hands curled into fists, one only slightly looser than the other to accommodate the half-ashed cigarette. “By then it was just… getting heavy. I kept thinking that I’d been through worse, right? That I got through that so I’d walk this off in a week or two and then hit the court again and it’d be fine. But it was only making things worse…” Neil’s voice dropped lower, turned scratchy and tense and Andrew released his mug so he could switch his cigarette to the other hand, dropping his newly-freed hand on the back of Neil’s neck and squeezing until the tension eased enough for the striker to be able to turn and look at him. 

Andrew didn’t pull his hand away as Neil continued. “I wanted to see you. Talk to you. But I knew if I called _you_ when the paramedics asked it wasn’t going to help anything. So I thought… If I called Andrew now, who would he call -- after dressing me down for being an idiot, that is.” Andrew snorted at that but Neil was able to flash him a small smile at the joke. It’s not like he was wrong. 

Still…

“You think I would call Aaron to come sit by your bedside if you called me about being hit by a car?” Andrew tried to put as much skepticism into his tone as possible, but it only came out as dry as damp sandpaper. 

“Not exactly, no. But I do think you would call Aaron.”

It was disconcerting and uncomfortable, to be known like that. Andrew squeezed a little harder but did not pull away, did not turn away, did not hide from that particular truth. His and Aaron’s relationship was not… _fixed_. They were still battling through their issues with each other, but they were both actually trying now. In the past few months, with Aaron backing off in regards to Andrew’s relationship with Neil -- with him actually… _supporting_ it… Andrew didn’t want to say that he and his brother had grown closer, but they’d become more comfortable around each other. With Katelyn and Neil being friends, with Katelyn being able to _speak_ to Neil on days where words may as well be bricks in the other man’s lungs -- that only added another layer that Andrew was not up to dissecting. He just knew that, at least when it came to relationships, he and Aaron were beginning to understand each other. 

So Neil wasn’t wrong. If Neil had called him, Andrew’s next phone call would have been to Aaron with a hard order for him to get the fuck to the hospital. Andrew wasn’t sure when that had happened, exactly -- because he knew that that person used to be Renee. It still _was_ Renee for a lot of things but… his circle was broadening. He was beginning to rely more on Aaron, on Kevin, on Nicky. He wasn’t exactly sure how he felt about that, but he was self-aware enough to know that it was true. 

Andrew let out a long, heavy sigh and shook his head. He checked his cigarette, then flicked the dead filter away without releasing Neil. When he turned back to him, the idiot was looking at him _like that_ again. Soft eyes, a generous weight to his mouth, his head tilted just slightly and his posture calm and relaxed. Even with the residual bruises and scrapes from the accident, he looked comfortable, and Andrew felt a thrill run through him the same way it did every time he realized that all those things were caused by _him_.

Instead of doling out a familiar reprimand, Andrew slid his hand from the back of Neil’s neck to cradle his jaw. He let himself relish in the feeling of his rabbit leaning his weight into the touch, let himself indulge by brushing his thumb over his cheek as he pulled him in for a short kiss that was no less powerful just because it was chaste. Kissing Neil was always like taking a sip of liquid lightning, it didn’t matter for how long or how deep it went. One touch of lips and he could feel that touch all the way to his toes. 

Neil was the one to lean their foreheads together, but Andrew did not resist. 

“Mm,” Neil sighed, the hum of his voice and the nearness of him as his breath puffed against his lips sending a shiver down Andrew’s spine. “You smell like strawberries.” 

Andrew rolled his eyes and pushed him gently away, picking up his coffee and nodding toward the door. “Come on, junkie. Better not keep your brood waiting or they’ll send out a search party.”

Neil laughed but didn’t protest as he stepped toward the door. He paused in the halo of light from the kitchen, though, glancing over his shoulder. 

“Nah,” he said with a careless shrug. “They know I’m with you.”

“So?”

Neil smiled, soft and warm -- but his eyes were dancing with a light that Andrew wanted to bottle up so he could use it to light his path on the dark days. “So,” Neil said with a shrug, “with you -- I’m found.” Then he turned back around the rest of the way and headed back inside. Andrew stared after him for a moment; then, because there was no one around to see, he let himself indulge in a small, fond smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am 100% not sorry if Andrew's indulgence in body care products seems OOC to anyone. It makes sense to me, and I fully believe he deserves to pamper himself. Also, I feel like Bee would promote it as an excellent self-care strategy for him to be able to take agency of his own body and learn to love himself. You become more attached to things to take care of, you know? And if you apply that to your own body, you start to care about it more -- and I feel like Bee would nudge Andrew in that direction, especially if he already had a penchant for high-quality lotions or something. Anyway, I'm not gonna ramble about this in the end-notes anymore. I just... felt the need to defend it ^///^


	3. party time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Foxes host the Winter Banquet! Neil is a stubborn dummy, Nicky finds an incriminating photograph, and Neil and Andrew learn something valuable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friends!! Thank you so much for your continued support and comments and luff <33 I was so relieved to hear that I’m not the only one who can get behind Andrew indulging in some fancy bodycare products and long showers as a way of self-care ^.^ 
> 
> Please forgive this chapter and any wild inaccuracies due to sport things. I do not know sports. I did not research schools or put any thought whatsoever into team names or school locations. I did not reference the books to see what teams were in their division. I pointedly attempted to refrain from mentioning a team by name unless the vaguery was awkward, then I made shit up. ^^;
> 
> Thank you also for all the comments and kudos!!! Gah, it just... ^///^ It just! <33 I love you all sm.

The rest of the week went by quietly. Neil was surprisingly compliant about the mandated bed rest, only getting up when he needed to wash up or move from the bedroom to the couch and back again. However, that compliance had apparently run thin by Saturday, as the idiot was _insisting_ on attending the Winter Banquet. It wouldn’t have been an option at all if it weren’t being hosted at PSU, but as it was -- Neil seemed to have gotten it into his head that he should be there. 

“The Ravens will be there.”

“You are not making your case as well as you seem to think you are.” Andrew levied an unimpressed stare at the other man. They had both just gotten out of the shower and Neil was electing to air-dry by laying on his back on the bed in nothing but a towel. He was getting the comforter damp but there were worthier things to be annoyed about right now. Like Neil thinking it was a lovely idea to play hopscotch with the fucking Ravens a week after getting run over by a car and having his organs sewn back together again in emergency surgery for five-fucking-hours. For fuck’s sake, his bruises were just barely starting to fade.

Neil sighed and turned his head to look at him. “I’m not going to start shit--”

Andrew snorted. 

“I’m not. Well. I don’t intend to. We can stay far away from them, I don’t care. They just have to see that I’m up and moving.”

“Why does it matter if they do or not? Since when do you care what the Ravens think, rabbit?” Andrew meant it to come out scathing but the words filtered out more tired than anything else. He scowled at himself, turning away to grab the sweatshirt hanging off the back of his desk chair and drag it on. When he looked back at Neil, the idiot had a quiet expression on his face as he watched him, something softer and understanding in a way that made Andrew want to punch and kiss him in equal measure. 

With a sigh and only a small wince, Neil sat up and turned to perch on the edge of the bed. “Personally? I don’t. But their coach is still reporting to the Moriyamas.”

They hadn’t brought up the Moriyamas all week, not since that frightened ‘ _m_ ’ in the hospital. There had been nothing to talk about, nothing to say that would have been in any way helpful, so they’d kept far away from the topic altogether. No Moriyamas or their goons had shown up at the door -- yet -- and that was all they had to go on to suppose whether or not they even _knew_ about the accident. 

But of course they knew, they _had_ to. It had been all over the news in a way it probably wouldn’t have if it had been any other team or any other player. The Foxes were always good fodder for the press, but their disaster magnet rookie from last year was a particularly juicy piece of chum the sharks just couldn’t resist. It was a wonder they’d actually managed to keep the press away from Neil at all, but the hospital had been vigilant about not allowing them past the waiting room and the other Foxes had each taken turns giving them cheerfully optimistic updates. 

It occurred to Andrew now what must have occurred to Neil to cause him to suddenly insist on going to the banquet: It was entirely possible that the only reason that the Moriyamas hadn’t shown up on their doorstep yet was because they didn’t want to waste resources when they already had a man who could report back to him at the end of the week. Why dig up Neil’s location and expend the manpower to send someone to threaten or check up on him when they could just wait and see if he showed up at the banquet?

He hated to admit it, but Neil was right. He had to go to the damn fucking banquet.

Neil seemed to read this acquiescence in his expression, because his mouth softened and his head tilted and he lifted a hand, holding it out to him. Andrew glared at him, then glared at the hand, before taking it with zero resistance. He let Neil pull him closer until he stood between his legs. Once there he lifted his free hand and gripped his rabbit’s chin, tilting his face up to look at him. Even through the war of agitation and annoyance and fear currently squabbling in his chest, Andrew couldn’t help but notice the way Neil’s whole demeanor softened and relaxed and _leaned forward_ into that touch -- like he was a flower starved for light and Andrew’s palm held the sun. He was sure that idiot rabbit didn’t even realize he did it, but Andrew never failed to notice it each and every time. 

They were still for a moment, the silence a cushion around them -- comfortable and familiar. Andrew had to fight the impulse to say something dismissive, the instinct to instill distance when he was _feeling_ something too well-ingrained in his psyche. He wanted to scoff at him. Wanted to curl his lip in distaste or maybe give him a dead glower of impartial indifferences. Wanted to tell him that if he decided to be stupid, Andrew wouldn’t be there to save him. 

He also wanted to promise that he would not allow anyone to touch him, no matter how stupid he was. He wanted to demand that Neil be careful. He wanted… He _wanted_...

But before a clear winner could be decided in this particular conflict, Neil spoke up and settled the matter for him. 

“Will you watch my back? Just in case?” Neil’s voice was soft, and tighter in a way that Andrew had become familiar with over these past several months. His words weren’t choked off, but there was a pressure on them that Neil was struggling with, was pushing himself through. Andrew was so focused on _that_ that it took him a moment to fully register the other man’s question. 

When he did, his grip tightened on his idiot’s chin. He forced it to relax after a moment, then loosen to the point where he could uncurl it and slide it up to cup his face more completely, his thumb tracing over the hashmarked scar on his cheek. Even with the tension wrapping around his own throat like a rusted iron chain, Neil still softened to that touch, still leaned into it, still gravitated toward it like a wayward astral stone pulled into the orbit of a lonely star. 

Andrew did not make him wait for the answer they both knew was a given: “Yes.”

Neil was getting better about asking for help. He was getting better about allowing him and the Foxes to carry his burden with him, to give him shelter when he needed it, to provide warmth in a cold he was used to weathering alone. Perhaps more than anyone else, Andrew knew what kind of strength that took. He knew what kind of _trust_ that took -- and it floored him each and every time that Neil could so effortlessly put that trust in _him_. After all of the lies on _both_ of their parts, the ones they spoke aloud and the ones they only told themselves but told them over and over so many times they almost tasted like truth.

That Neil could look at him now, open and vulnerable, and ask for him to _be there_ , Andrew felt… 

Maybe Aaron called it love. Andrew didn’t like to think about that, because to do so he would have to admit that _love_ was too flimsy and temporary a concept. Even in its truest, most ideal form, _love_ was a microscopic _spec_ in the universe between him and Neil. 

There was a soft puff of warm breath against his hand as Neil sighed. Andrew leaned down enough for their foreheads to rest together and for a long moment they stayed like that, cushioned in their silences and the quiet knowing of _them_. When they finally pulled away so that Neil could get dressed and they could prepare to return to campus for the day, Andrew granted himself one last moment of softness and pressed a brief kiss to his rabbit’s forehead. 

Neil wore delight like a crown perched on the corner of his mouth all the way back to campus.

*****

Almost immediately upon returning to campus, Neil got shepherded away by the girls to ‘prepare’ him or whatever. Despite the wide-eyed confusion and mild alarm on the junkie’s face, Andrew didn’t miss the way Neil leaned into Dan’s arm as it settled around his shoulders or the way he curled his fingers more tightly around Allison’s hand when she took his to drag him off. The girls had paused briefly in their kidnapping venture to look warily at him for a response, but Andrew had only shrugged and offered a mild, “You break him, you buy him,” before shooing them off with a dismissive hand.

He pointedly ignored the knowing look Renee shot him as he palmed her Neil’s pain pills and instead turned to his own dorm. While the girls were having their fun with Neil, he’d make sure they were packed up for winter break. He’d only stopped by briefly on Thursday when he’d come to campus to take his finals and hadn’t actually done any packing -- only grabbed a few things of his and Neil’s for the rest of the week. They were going to be spending the entirety of winter break at the house and he didn’t want to have to drive back unnecessarily because someone had forgotten something they apparently couldn’t live without. 

While there was little chance of Andrew or Neil pulling that sort of bullshit -- Neil because he still didn’t own much and Andrew because he lacked attachment to most material items -- Nicky was another matter entirely. 

Kevin was going to be spending winter break with Wymack, so that was out of his hands. Let the Coach deal with that particular problem -- Andrew was going to have several of his own to handle for the next month. If he had to supervise Nicky’s packing so that he didn’t have to put up with his bullshit whining about leaving his favorite pillow behind or something, then he would do what he had to do. 

“Andrew!” came a bright shout the moment he stepped into the dorm room. Andrew fought the impulse to sigh and just let the door swing shut, locking it before turning to face whatever was waiting for him. 

“There you are!” Nicky bounced into view, tripping on an open suitcase he’d left in the middle of the damn doorway to the bedroom. “Hey! Oh--” He looked around. “Where’s Neil?”

“With the girls. What is…?” He gestured vaguely to the disaster that had once been their dorm room. Clothes were everywhere, along with various other piles of random crap. The one nearest Andrew included a jar of peanut butter, two Playstation controllers, a throw pillow, and what looked like the decorative wall tapestry that Nicky had gotten over the summer but had never decided on a place to hang. 

“Eerik is coming for Christmas,” Nicky said, like that explained anything at all, grinning so widely that _Andrew’s_ face hurt just looking at him. 

“I am aware,” Andrew responded slowly, picking his way around various groupings of mess to angle toward the bedroom. “That does not explain why you have a jar of pickles balanced on the back of the couch.” He didn’t need to point for emphasis, but he did anyway.

Nicky followed his gaze and flushed, skipping around a pile of shoes to scoop up the jar. He cradled it on one hip like an infant as he turned back to Andrew. “Okay, so maybe I got a little excited. I’m trying to figure out what I need to bring back with us. I’m going to spend all day Sunday and Monday getting the house ready. I don’t want to forget anything!”

Andrew pushed the suitcase blocking the bedroom out of the way with one foot. “You don’t need to bring any of the food.” They were going to go grocery shopping anyway. There was no point taking up space in the car with food from the dorm, especially since it was all stuff that was going to keep until they got back. 

“I _know_ ,” Nicky sighed as he followed Andrew into the bedroom. “I just… I got excited! And nervous. And excited. I haven’t seen Eerik since _Finals_ , you know?”

“You talk to him every day.” Andrew didn’t need to look over at his cousin to add an expression to the dry delivery, but he did anyway, his tone flat and expression blank. It was true. Nicky talked to Eerik almost as much as he talked _about_ him. When he wasn’t talking with him on the phone during the overlap in free waking hours between East Coast USA and Germany, he was Skyping with him in the middle of the night. There had been more than one occasion where Andrew had desperately wished he could unlearn German. He did _not_ need such graphic descriptions about his cousin or his cousin’s boyfriend or what they wanted to do to each other. 

“Hey, you don’t get to judge me. You get to _live_ with _your_ sweetie.”

Andrew barely managed not to grimace and quickly turned the expression into a glare instead. 

Nicky, that little fucker, looked downright _smug_. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

“You are getting awful bold for someone who is depending on me to pick up your boyfriend from the airport or even to get you back to Columbia at all,” Andrew pointed out calmly as he turned away from his cousin to dig out his own suitcase. He unzipped it and left it open on the floor next to the dresser he and Neil shared, beginning to pick through their things for what he wanted to bring with them. 

Nicky gasped but didn’t sound nearly concerned enough. Fuck. He was clearly getting too soft. “Andrew Joseph Minyard you don’t mean that! I know you don’t!”

Andrew looked over at him as he scooped the contents of the sock-and-underwear drawer into his arms to dump unceremoniously into the open suitcase at his feet. “Keep pushing your luck and we will find out.” He pointed to the door and the mess of the living room beyond. “I am not cleaning that shit up.”

Nicky rolled his eyes but he was smiling again. “Yeah, yeah, don’t worry about it okay? I’ll make sure it’s all cleaned up.” He turned to go but paused as he saw something on the floor. Andrew followed his gaze and froze, but Nicky jumped forward and snatched it up before he had a chance to move. The photograph was crisp and new from being protected at the bottom of his drawer for the past few months. Andrew had no need to pull it out when he had the original saved as a favorite in his phone -- but a moment of weakness had had him printing the photo at the CVS down the street _just in case_ it somehow got deleted from his phone, the cloud, and the backup file on his computer. 

He was deeply, _deeply_ regretting that impulse now.

“Oh. My God,” Nicky breathed as he stared at the photo Andrew had taken of Neil a few months back during one of their solo trips to the house in Columbia. 

“That is private,” Andrew hissed out before he could stop himself, making a grab for the photo, but Nicky held it up out of his reach, his eyes wide as he drank it in, mouth gaped open like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. 

“This is… this is fucking _adorable_ Andrew!! How could you keep this from me!? From us!? I need to show _everyone!_ ” Nicky made an unholy squealing sound of bastard delight and turned as if to charge out of the room. 

Andrew’s shoulder met his sternum instead. He did not pull his knife, but his tone was just as sharp as he hissed, “ _No._ ”

Maybe it was the hit, or maybe it was the fact that he _hadn’t_ been stabbed, or maybe it was something else in Andrew’s voice that neither of them had really been expecting. Something a little bit more vulnerable hidden just behind the violent demand. Whatever it was made Nicky pause and look down at him, surprised. Then he looked from Andrew to the photo and back again before slowly lowering his arm and holding it out to him. 

“Okay. I’m sorry.” He offered a sheepish smile that was no less sincere, even in the wake of his exuberance just moments before. “I just got excited. I mean… look at him.”

Andrew did, even though he knew what the photo looked like. Of course he knew. He looked at it every single day. It was arguably one of his favorites and on days where his skin felt too tight or the air too thick to breathe, the sight of Neil’s smile in that photo and the bloom of yellow from the flower in his hair just… It was a reminder that even creatures made of teeth and claws and broken, shattered edges could have soft things. That there was a warmth he was allowed to touch. There was a peace he could covet.

Andrew didn’t realize he had taken the photo and was tracing his fingers over it until Nicky made a sound and his eyes snapped up. He glared at his cousin, wary of all the _feelings_ he could sense coming off of him in waves, the intensity of emotion he could _see_ in the other man’s wide brown eyes. 

He pressed the photo to his chest and jabbed a finger into Nicky’s. “Don’t. Just… don’t.”

Nicky raised his hands in surrender and nodded, but did a shit job at hiding his smile. “Yeah. Sure thing. Adorable photo of Neil with a flower in his hair that you clearly are utterly enamored with? What adorable photo of Neil with a flower in his hair that you clearly are utterly enamored with? I didn’t see any adorable photo of Neil with a fl-- ow!” Nicky cringed as Andrew jabbed him again. “Sorry! Sorry sorry sorry! I’m kidding! Totally kidding! I won’t say anything, okay?”

Andrew glared at him for another full minute, then two, letting Nicky squirm under the weight of his stare until he was sure the other man understood there would be _consequences_ if opened his stupid mouth about this to anyone, ever. Unfortunately, there was no way to truly enforce it until he was actually willing to stab Nicky over this. The most annoying part was that Andrew didn’t think he _was_. 

He finally stepped back and let Nicky go with a final hard glare, which he maintained as Nicky quickly sidestepped and hurried out of the bedroom. Only once he was back in the living room and Andrew could hear him beginning to clean up did he look back down at the photo. He let himself fuss over it for only a second, making sure the edges hadn’t been bent or that it hadn’t been creased. Then he carefully tucked it into the bottom of his suitcase and went about packing. He paused only once, and it was to send Nicky a text message that said: _2 pints, you know of what, or ur favorite pillow will not make it to Columbia_.

Nicky didn’t respond. But there was a small distressed sound from the living room, then a clamor of hurried feet before the door opened and shut. It might not be enough to keep Nicky’s mouth permanently shut, but it would do for now.

*****

The Winter Banquet hadn’t even started yet and Andrew was ready for it to be fucking _over_. It had already been a long enough day as it was, and now he had to spend the next several hours crammed onto an exy court with a bunch of angsty jocks with the highly unrealistic expectation that he wouldn’t stab any of them. The only thing getting him through it at all was the knowledge that once the night was over he was going to be able to drive his family back to Columbia and _stay there_ for the next month.

Well, Aaron was spending part of the break with Katelyn’s family, but then the two of them would be joining him, Neil, Nicky, and Eerik at the house for the bulk of the holidays. It would be a full house but somehow Andrew didn’t really mind. 

For now, though, he just had to get through this damned night. 

The Foxhole Court was decorated for the end of the season and surprisingly enough the Vixens -- who had volunteered to do the decorating -- had done a decent job making it festive without being garish. Considering there was no changing the background palette of burn-your-eyes-out orange and while, they’d definitely had their work cut out for them. Large sheets of silver and white were draped around the interior of the court, obscuring much of the offensive orange, and the protective flooring that had been laid over the actual floor of the court was a warm fake woodgrane that balanced with the cooler colors nicely. Instead of going for the bright reds and greens of Christmastime, the self-appointed decorating committee had chosen to go with blues, silvers, white, and gold. It was wintery and festive without being obnoxious and if Andrew were in a kinder mood he might even appreciate it. 

As it were, the lack of a brain-melting decor only meant that he was able to glare around the court without getting a headache. Well… _yet_. The night was still young, after all. 

Renee found him where he was lurking off to the side, sitting in the stands and watching the Vixens fuss around with the caterers to make sure everything was ready before the other teams arrived. She was wearing a modest blue and white dress that came down just past her knees and had sheer sleeves that looped around her thumbs, a snowflake pin in her hair. 

“You look nice tonight,” she said with a smile.

Andrew grunted. He wasn’t wearing anything special. Black slacks with a matching blazer over a dark gold shirt. He also had a pale blue tie that he hadn’t bothered to actually tie, allowing it to unsteady remain draped around his neck, secured by his collar, like an unimpressed pet snake. The pops of color had been a last minute decision, a deviation from his usual all-black for no other reason (or so he told himself) than because he could. The shirt had been something Neil had actually picked out for him one time when he’d dragged his rabbit out shopping, commenting that the color had reminded him of Andrew’s eyes. Although he’d been incredibly annoyed by this at the time, he also had no other choice ( _clearly_ ) but to buy the damn thing. And when else was he going to wear a dress shirt? The tie had been a gift from Nicky. 

“You look like you are about to go caroling,” he shot back without much venom.

Renee only smiled. “Maybe I will. Would you like to join me?”

Andrew just stared at her and she chuckled, looking out onto the court. They remained in a companionable silence for a few more minutes before Renee spoke again. 

“Allison is bringing Neil by in a few minutes. I hitched a ride with Matt and Dan.”

“And…?” Andrew made his tone as bored as possible, not like he’d had to stop himself at least six times from texting to make sure his rabbit wasn’t overdoing it, that he was laying down, that he was taking his pain meds if he needed them, that he hadn’t been run over or kidnapped while Andrew dealt with the dorm room and getting them ready for the winter break. He wasn’t looking at Renee but he could hear the knowing smile in her voice and that was just plain annoying. 

“Just thought to let you know, in case you were looking for him.”

“He isn’t an infant, he does not need my constant supervision.” The protest was unnecessary, but it made him feel better. He knew that Renee was only trying to reassure him, because other than Neil -- she was the one who knew him best. In some ways she knew him even better than his idiot rabbit, because she could see parts of him that Neil was still sometimes blind to. The parts that concerned his care for _him_. 

“Of course not. Especially when he has so many others also looking out for him. But that doesn’t mean you didn’t worry.” 

My, she was getting awfully bold. 

Andrew finally looked over at her with a narrow-eyed glare. She only smiled serenely back at him until he huffed and looked back at the court-turned-banquet-hall with a shrug. “Whatever.”

It wasn’t too much later that the rest of the team started to file in. The freshmen were corralled by Dan and sent to help the Vixens with any finishing touches while Nicky could be heard all the way across the court as he gushed to his date about his boyfriend coming in just a few short days. Aaron had already absconded with Katelyn to some dark and shadowy corner where at least a dozen other couples would probably make use of throughout the night. 

Kevin had found his way over toward them and had taken Renee’s place when the other goalkeeper had decided to go see if Dan needed any last-minute assistance. It was around then that Allison and Neil arrived and… _oh_. 

Andrew didn’t realize he’d stood and was making his way over to them until he was suddenly close enough to see the smug look on Reynolds’s stupid face. 

“Andrew,” she said too-pleasantly, “may I present your boyfriend? Doesn’t he look nice?”

 _Nice_ was a fucking understatement and she knew it, the bitch. 

Now, Andrew should be used to seeing Neil dressed in clothes that actually fit him that were styled to accentuate exactly the right parts of his body to make anyone with an active libido drool. Not that he dressed up all the time or anything, but Andrew had been dressing him for their semi-frequent trips to Eden’s Twilight for over a year now and beyond that had even started being able to replace his standard wardrobe with more acceptable pieces. Between him and Reynolds, they’d almost gotten him to the point of looking like a normal person instead of a homeless child at least five of seven days per week. 

Maybe it was a combination of the tailored pants or the undone buttons that exposed the hollow of his throat and the seductive suggestion of his collarbone. Or maybe it was the way Allison had styled his hair after trimming it up so that it was no longer shaggy around his neck and ears. Or maybe it was… Jesus _fuck_ had she put eyeliner on him? 

Andrew dragged his gaze away from Neil long enough to glare at Allison but she just smirked smugly back at him. 

“Well? Aren’t you going to tell him that he looks nice?” she preened.

“No.” He looked to Neil, who didn’t seem offended by this. If anything, he looked rather amused. The blue of his eyes was particularly pronounced thanks to the eyeliner and the shirt he was wearing, and - _dammit_ \- his mouth was doing that stupid thing where it curved up in his general direction. Dick. 

Allsion huffed. “Rude. After all that work I put into making him so pretty for you?”

Andrew sifted his gaze over to her and glared. Either it was effective or Allison had given up before she threw her hands up with a pointed, “Whatever, Minyard.” Then she grabbed Kevin by the arm and started tugging him toward where the first guest team was starting to file in. “Come on, Day, time to let Dr. Jekyll come out to play. Media smile on, let’s go!”

Neil smothered a laugh with the back of his hand as he watched a helpless Kevin get dragged off by the Exy Princess. Once they were gone, he turned back to Andrew and a little shiver went down his spine at the way those blue eyes scanned him appreciatively from head to toe and back again. 

“You look good, Drew.” 

Andrew swallowed his heart, which had suddenly jumped into his throat. His tone was thankfully flat when he responded with a drawled, “As opposed to the rest of the time, when I look like shit?”

Neil laughed. Andrew wanted to taste the sound. He bet it was sweet with just a bite of something sharper -- salted caramel with a shot of espresso. 

“You’re wearing the shirt.” It took a moment, then Andrew realized that Neil was… _pleased_. Andrew glared at him. 

“It is a formal event. Did you expect jeans and a hoodie?”

“No, you’re too vain for that. But all black? Yeah, I was kinda expecting that.”

If Andrew were any less composed an individual, he might have sputtered at that. As it were, he just snorted and rolled his eyes. “I am not allergic to color, Josten.” He gestured for them to head over to where their team’s table was and Neil fell into step beside him -- a teasing grin on his face that Andrew was pretty sure he wanted to punch. 

“I’m glad. Otherwise I’d be pretty concerned, considering all the orange you’ve got to wear on a weekly basis.”

Andrew made a face. “Do _not_ remind me. We are going to be escaping from this hellhole for a full month and I do not want to look at the color until we get back.” Neil snickered at that and something loosened in Andrew’s chest that he hadn’t realized had been weighing him down. 

They reached their team’s table and took their seats and the mood dipped slightly. Neil scowled when he saw that his chair was already fixed up with the special pillow the doctor had given them to help distribute the pressure on his pelvis and lower back. By the way his fingers curled and his mouth turned down, those glacial eyes flashing with temper, Andrew just _knew_ the other man was resisting the childish urge to kick the chair over or swipe the pillows off of it, but he managed to restrain himself from doing to. Andrew waited as Neil stood next to the chair, watching to see if the idiot was going to be stubborn and stay standing until someone told him to sit down, or if he would just get it the fuck over with and sit down on his own like a fucking grown up. 

It might have actually been the former, if the team they were paired up with tonight hadn’t arrived at that moment and started to make their way over. Apparently, it was a lesser hit to his pride for him to just sit down than to allow the other team to see the pillows his teammates had _so helpfully_ made sure not to forget to set up for him. 

(Andrew was not going to bring attention to the fact that he was the one who had made sure to get not one, not two, but _three_ sets of the pillows before they left the hospital. One for the house, one for the car, and one that he had shoved at Dan that Thursday when he’d come to campus to take his finals, just in case they’d need them back at campus. He’d then been the one to text her a reminder about them earlier today when Neil had made it clear he was not going to be missing out on this stupid banquet.)

They ended up being seated across from some team from Georgia that scowled as much as they smiled and chugged their punch like it was already spiked. The two women on their team kept calling everyone ‘honey’ in a way that made it sound like they were actually saying ‘dumbass’. Andrew didn’t hate them. 

“Speaking of walking disasters, look who’s here.” Andrew hadn’t been the one that the other team’s backliner had been talking to, but he followed her scathing glare anyway -- not that he’d needed the direction to notice the wave of black that had just entered the room. 

_Ravens._

Andrew’s fingers reflexively curled around the knife beside his plate before he forced himself to let it go. They were little threat to the Foxes right now, not in any way that actually mattered. After last year’s scandal series surrounding the Ravens -- from Kevin’s hand to Riko’s suicide, Jean’s sudden move to the Trojans, and Tetsuji’s sudden resignation -- there had been quite a bit of speculation about the other team. Andrew hadn’t exactly paid attention to it, but more had been forced to absorb it as it unfolded thanks to Kevin and Neil, who’d been obsessive about keeping up with what was happening regarding the Moriyama’s pet team. 

On some level, Andrew even understood why -- both Kevin and Neil had been supremely fucked up by the Ravens. For Kevin especially it had been is _life_ until he’d come to the Foxes and he was still unlearning all the shit they’d indoctrinated him into believing about himself and exy and, fuck, probably how the moon waxed and waned to the whim of a Moriyama’s right hand. 

Everyone had been eager to see how the Ravens would play this year with the loss of both their coach and the last remnants of the ‘Perfect Court’. The answer shouldn’t have surprised anyone: they played like fucking _Ravens_. Dirty, mean, ruthless, and skilled. The main difference, however, was that the new coach had an entire team of assistant coaches, admins, and publicists to keep both his team and their fans scrupulously in check. He was a quieter man than Tetsuji had been, and Andrew didn’t care to know whether it was because he was smarter or just more of a dog than the previous coach. No one else would know, but Kevin, Neil, and Andrew were all very certain that this coach reported directly to the main branch of the Moriyama family. Understandable, since there really _was_ no ‘second branch’ anymore. One of them was dead and the other was… well, honestly, probably also dead by now. No one had heard from Tetsuji Moriyama since his resignation and rumored return to Japan. 

The Foxes had seen the Ravens twice since finals -- once at the Fall Banquet back in September, and once for their game a few weeks later. Neither occasion had been pleasant, but neither had been deadly either, which was all Andrew cared about. 

Now, the Ravens strolled in like a dark cloud, haughty and hungry for redemption. Unlike last year, the Ravens no longer dressed like identical carbon copies of each other -- though they still all stuck to a particular theme: black with a single accent of blood red. All eyes followed them as they made their way across the court to the table on the opposite side from where the Foxes were sitting. 

“Well, they are certainly festive, aren’t they?” the same backliner said with lilting humor in her voice. “I wonder if they’ll invite us to the next seance. Do you think we have to bring our own virginal sacrifices or will they be provided?” A round of laughter bubbled up from both sides of the table and the tension eased. Conversations picked up where they’d been left off at and Andrew returned his attention to where Neil was goading Kevin into a debate about their preferred professional teams in what was clearly the man’s method of distracting the other striker. It was working, especially when Matt, who was on Kevin’s other side, decided to chime in with an opinion that scandalized the both of them. 

In this way, dinner passed almost peacefully. Andrew divided his attention between Neil and Kevin on one side of him and Aaron, Katelyn, and Nicky who were on the other. He was surrounded by his family, they were all safe and as mentally stable as a social event could allow any of them, and the food was halfway decent. 

Of course, such things could only remain so calm for so long. 

Once dinner was done the mingling began and they were faced with a dilemma. Kevin clearly wanted to wander and network, but he did not want to do so alone with Ravens in the room. Even with Riko and Tetsuji gone, the striker’s former team was a trigger-point even Andrew could recognize. Neil, on the other hand, had already pushed himself by even _attending_ the event tonight and even _Kevin_ had agreed that Neil shouldn’t be doing any more walking around tonight than was absolutely necessary. Neil was already looking pale from the activity and socializing, a not-so-subtle reminder that a week ago he had been on a fucking operating table and there were currently stitches in several of his major organs. 

When Andrew frowned between the two of them as the rest of the team started to get up and wander off, it was Neil who offered the compromise:

“Go with Kevin,” he said with a small shrug, leaning back in his chair and adjusting the pillow supporting his lower back. “I’ll linger near the others. It’ll be fine.”

Andrew narrowed his eyes at him, unconvinced. 

Neil sighed. “Seriously, Andrew. No one is going to do anything.” He looked around, then lowered his voice. “You don’t have to worry about the Ravens, in any case. I’m an investment. The Moriyamas don’t want me broken because then I can’t make them money.”

Kevin was standing tense at his shoulder. Any mention of the Moriyamas made the other striker go cold. On the wrong day, it did the same thing to Neil. 

“I said I would watch your back,” Andrew reminded him, not fooled by Neil’s casual tone and dismissive offer. He didn’t say ‘ _you **asked** me to watch your back_’ or ‘ _you were nervous about this just this morning_ ’ -- but he knew he didn’t have to. Just bringing up the agreement had Neil pressing his lips together at the memory. 

“I know,” Neil said. “If I decide to wander away from any of the others I’ll send someone to come get you.” He lifted his hands and continued in sign language, leaving his voice behind. “I will call you if I need you. I promise.”

Andrew wanted to throttle him. He wanted to whack him upside the back of the head and chide him for being stupid. He knew what Neil was doing. He knew that Neil saw Kevin’s anxiety and was setting aside his own so that Kevin could have a protector tonight. In Neil’s eyes, Kevin needed it more -- because Neil was stupid and had a martyr complex. Neil was wounded. He was in pain. He was _vulnerable_. He was in a room with a couple hundred strangers, unable to run or protect himself. It was a damn near nightmare situation for both of them and Neil was asking him now to just _walk away_ from him so that he could be a shield for their friend. 

Neil held his gaze, then continued on in ASL. “He feels safest with you. You know he does. Remember the last dinner?” 

At the Fall Banquet, Kevin had been cornered by two Ravens who’d just wanted to ‘catch up’. Neil and Andrew had caught up soon enough, and the subject of the conversation hadn’t been clear, but both of them had been present for the panic attack ten minutes later that had ended with Kevin throwing up until there was nothing left but the sour stench of stomach acid. 

Andrew did not want to leave either of them, but fuck it -- Neil was right. Of the two of them, Kevin was more likely to be targeted. Sure, he was just as protected as Neil in theory -- but where Neil was an instigator and a brat, Kevin had _history_ with the Ravens and many of them blamed him for everything that had happened last year, Neil’s big mouth included. He could recruit some of the upperclassmen or his family to tag along and babysit Kevin, but he couldn’t trust them to keep to it, not in the same way he could trust them to cling to Neil. The upperclassmen tolerated Kevin, but they adored Neil. Nicky was little protection to anyone even if he could be relied upon to sound the alarm in case of drama, and was unfortunately likely to get distracted no matter who he was assigned to. Renee would stick to Kevin if he asked her to, but Kevin wasn’t her responsibility -- she had the rest of the team to look out for. The only person Andrew knew he could trust to watch out for either of them was… well… Aaron. 

His eyes instantly broke away to find his brother, and when he did he waited for the other Minyard to feel his gaze. Once their eyes locked he gestured with a jerk of his head and watched as confusion, then resigned understanding drifted across his twin’s face. Aaron said something to Katelyn, who was almost half a foot taller than him in the silver heels she was wearing, and the pair started over. 

Neil knew he’d won when he saw their approach. He looked from them to Andrew and offered a small, affectionate smile that made Andrew glare at him. 

“I’ll be good,” Neil promised with a deliberate sway of his hands. 

Andrew just scoffed. “I’ll believe that when I see it,” he responded in the same language, then switched to English as Aaron and Katelyn joined him. 

“Take your damn pills. The whole point of you being here will be utterly moot if you pass out from pain halfway through.” He ignored Neil’s sigh and just stared at him as the other man retrieved the bottle of painkillers from his suit jacket and shook one tablet into his palm. Once he’d swallowed it, Andrew turned to Kevin. “Let’s go.”

Kevin stared at him, then looked to Neil. After a long moment he stood a little bit straighter. Then, without breaking eye contact with the other striker, he lifted one hand to his chin and pulled it down and away in a clumsy but readable sign. 

“Thank you.”

Neil’s eyes went wide and his mouth dropped open. Aaron was wearing a similar expression. Katelyn looked annoyingly like she wanted to give everyone a hug and Andrew took a deliberate step away from her. 

It only took a moment, then Neil’s shock turned into a lopsided grin that he knew Kevin was rarely on the receiving end of -- it just wasn’t how their friendship usually worked. At least, that’s not how their friendship _had_ worked, but Andrew supposed that as bent and broken people started to mend around each other, their relationships could change too. The smaller striker gave that grin, then breathed out a light laugh before speaking aloud as he signed, “Yeah, no problem.”

Kevin, flustered and shaky by his own display of humanity, huffed and stalked away a moment later. Andrew gave the others a two-finger salute before sighing and following after him. He did not have a name for the exact feeling that bubbled up between his ribs at that particular exchange. It was something between amusement and approval, and maybe close to pride. Whatever it was, it was a good thing and he magnanimously chose to accept it.

*****

Andrew was _bored_. He did not even have the energy to be properly annoyed. He was just _bored_ and _done_ , and ready to go _home_. He wanted the house in Columbia. He wanted his bed. He wanted Neil sighing and comfortable beside him, beneath him…

Thoughts of his partner had Andrew searching the court for him again, for the nth time in the last couple of hours, as he and Kevin moved from one group of nameless collegiate athletes and their coaches to the next. Neil had kept his word and for the most part had stayed close to Aaron and Katelyn. He stood or walked short distances but mostly sat using the support cushions as athletes from other teams either came over to him or ignored him completely. At one point when Aaron and Katelyn went off to dance, Andrew saw his brother discreetly recruit Renee and Allison to take a turn keeping the junkie company. 

Right now, Neil was leaning back in his chair listening as Matt prattled on about something and Dan laughed at him. There were two others in the little gathering, players from other teams that Andrew only vaguely recognized from having played them, but with Matt and Dan flanking Neil it would be impossible for them to reach him without going through the other two first. Not that they appeared to have the intent of threat, laughing as they were at whatever stupidity Boyd was spewing, but Andrew could appreciate Matt and Dan’s vigilance. The Foxes could be incredibly stupid at times, but he didn’t think their positioning was an accident. 

Especially when Neil looked so _tired_. Even from here, Andrew could tell that he was past his limit for the day. They honestly probably should have left right after dinner and Andrew was mentally kicking himself for not insisting on it. It was also a telltale sign that while he was clearly listening to the conversation he wasn’t participating in it, not even to join in ribbing Boyd about whatever idiocy the others were laughing about. He was working too hard to appear engaged and when others did direct conversation toward him he responded with a wave of his hand or a smile and a shrug, all moves that had once been so foreign to him but in the past several months had become a part of a dance Andrew knew very well by now. Even as Andrew watched, he caught Neil tapping his nails to the side of this throat, his smile false and strained. 

Yeah. It was time to go. 

Andrew turned to tell Kevin this only to find the other man already watching him. 

“Are you staying or going?” Last year, Andrew would not have given him an option and Kevin wouldn’t have wanted one, but Kevin’s relationship with Neil wasn’t the only one that had changed, had _evolved_.

Kevin studied him, then looked across the court to Neil, then darted his gaze around to find Coach. After resting there for a prolonged moment he returned it to Andrew. “I’ll stay. I’ll see you guys next week?” They’d made loose plans for Kevin to come over one day next week before Christmas, just to hang out. 

Andrew nodded confirmation, waited a beat just in case Kevin had anything else to add, then turned and made his way across the court to his partner. 

As if he could sense his approach, Neil turned his head at just that moment and their eyes locked. Andrew rolled his eyes at the pinch of the striker’s brows and the concerned way they flicked from Andrew over his shoulder to Kevin and back again. 

“He’s fine,” Andrew signed with a dismissive flick of his fingers. “I want to go home.”

Neil relaxed, then looked so immeasurably relieved that Andrew _knew_ they should have left hours ago. There was little use arguing about it now, though. Andrew would just have to make Neil suffer the consequences of his actions and the stupid little rabbit could stay in bed for the next two days until he got his strength back again. If Neil was going to do this two steps forward, one step back bullshit with his recovery from _surgery_ then Andrew was going to at least make sure he got a full two steps forward each and every time. 

By the time he reached the little group, Neil was already pushing up to stand, looking far too unsteady despite the fact that he didn’t wobble on the rise. Andrew resisted the urge to reach out and take his elbow just in case he toppled, settling instead for hovering just within arms length as Neil nodded his goodbyes. 

Dan, who appeared to be learning, opened her arms to offer him a hug then blew him a kiss without hesitation when Neil just shook his head in polite decline. Matt looked a little worried for a moment, but that expression relaxed as well when he looked from Neil to Andrew, apparently deciding that if Neil was with Andrew that he’d be okay. See? Learning. Andrew might have even felt a little mollified if he weren’t so annoyed already. He only really had the patience for one emotion at a time when it came to the people around him and annoyance was both more familiar and more comfortable so he stuck with that. 

Neil lifted one hand as they began to walk away. “Nicky?” he spelled out, keeping his hand close to his chest as he glanced around the room. 

When Neil’s eyes landed back on him, Andrew lifted his phone in answer before swiping open to his messages and tapping on the conversation with Nicky. 

_You:_  
leaving now. say goodbye to ur date and meet @ the car in 10 or we leave without u

He showed this to Neil, who snorted, then shoved his phone back into his pocket without bothering to read the answering message that buzzed in a moment later. Two minutes later they were crossing through the home team lounge and stepping out into the foyer to make their way out of the building and into the parking lot where the Maserati was waiting. 

Neil noticed they were being followed half a second before Andrew did, but Andrew was already turning toward the potential threat by the time his partner’s hand touched his jacket sleeve in warning. He had a knife in each hand before he’d fully turned around and was positioning himself firmly in front of Neil before he came to a stop. It only took another moment for him to recognize their pursuer as the present coach of the Ravens and he was extremely grateful that he’d gone for the knives.

Behind him, Neil went so still that Andrew felt the weight of him like a stone wall at his back. Andrew narrowed his eyes, his jaw aching from how hard he was clenching his teeth. It was taking more self control than he liked to admit to refrain from baring them in savage warning. 

Their pursuer stopped a cautious distance away and regarded them both with a cool indifference that Andrew figured was probably a prerequisite for being a Moriyama pet goon. Without taking his eyes off either of them, he inclined his head in a greeting that looked polite but was probably at least mildly insulting. 

“Mr. Josten, Mr. Minyard. I am glad I was able to catch you before you left for the evening. I had hoped to have a quick word with Mr. Josten.” His voice was mild, lacking the inflection of a threat that Andrew was sure was implied anyway. 

“Say your words then. He’s listening.” If possible, Andrew felt Neil tense behind him even more - from stone to obsidian, heavy and dark and anxious with the weight of the moment. 

The Ravens coach raised an eyebrow, but that was the only indication that he had any such opinion on Andrew’s rudeness. Instead of commenting on it, he flicked his gaze over Andrew’s shoulder to Neil. “We should not speak in mixed company. It will only take a moment. I only bring a message.”

Andrew didn’t even have to see Neil’s face to know the war that was probably happening inside of his rabbit. The war between wanting to stay with Andrew and wanting to protect him. Neil was already moving, sidestepping around Andrew to approach the other man, but Andrew put out an arm to block his path. 

“Anything that involves Neil involves me too.” _No._ He was not going to allow Neil to walk off with a Raven. He did not care if this coach was supposedly more under control than Tetsuji had been and that it was ‘unlikely’ that he’d do any harm to Neil even if they were left alone together. Andrew was not going to take that risk. For all he knew, this was going to be some ploy to get Neil back over on the Ravens, or maybe the fucker was just going to off him because Ichiru suddenly went the way of his dead brother and lost his fucking mind because he thinks his toy is broken. 

_No._

“Andrew.” Neil’s voice was tight and rough, but even the low volume couldn’t disguise his urgency. Andrew gritted his teeth at the forced sound of it, but he tore his eyes away from the threat and looked at his partner. Neil lifted his hands and continued silently, using ASL. “It’s better if he doesn’t know that you know anything.”

Andrew didn’t want to drop his arm to unblock the space between Neil and the Moriyama dog, didn’t want to put his knives away, but he needed both hands to sign so he angled his body slightly so he’d be able to act faster if need be before returning the knives to their sheaths. “You think they don’t already know I’m in this?” he signed back, his gestures aggressive. He put that energy into his face as well, unwilling to be misunderstood, asking the question with the raise of his eyebrows and the curl of his lip. 

“The less you know, the safer you are!” Neil’s blue eyes were wide, sparking with anger and fear in equal measure as he clawed his hands through the narrow space between them in sharp, pointed gestures. 

“I said I would watch your back,” Andrew reminded him with a hard glare. 

“And now I’m watching yours.”

“I don’t want that.”

“Too fucking bad.”

Andrew wanted to fucking strangle the damn junkie, but that would defeat the purpose of trying to keep him safe. He was unwilling to back down, though. Not in this. 

He took a slow, deep breath, stretching his fingers then curling them into fists before stretching them out again. He set his shoulders back, he shoved the anger and the tension down his body through the soles of his feet and into the endless expanse of the ground beneath him -- the world a canyon able to easily accept a couple gallons of rage that served him no purpose here and now. If he needed it later, the earth could give it back. 

When he lifted his hands again, his gestures were smoother, calmer, slower, with a fixed deliberateness he knew Neil would pay attention to. “You and me,” he signed. “We are in this together. You watch my back, and I watch yours. Even if that means bringing each other under fire.”

Andrew watched the struggle between shadow and fire in the cool winter of Neil’s eyes. He understood that battle, he _did_. He knew that Neil wanted to protect him from this. He knew he felt guilty for bringing him into it to begin with. Knew he was regretting ever asking him to watch his back this morning, because the last thing Neil wanted was to potentially put Andrew in danger. Andrew was well aware of the lengths that Neil was willing to go in order to protect him. They’d been down that road before and Andrew was not going to allow it to happen again. 

Finally, Neil took a slow breath and gave a stiff nod. “Together,” he finally signed, and Andrew could taste the relief like fresh rain on his tongue. It reenergized him and he flashed a sharp, savaged grin, a baring of teeth and a promise of war, before turning back to face the waiting threat. This time Neil stood directly beside him instead of behind him. Andrew kept his hands empty but ready. 

For his part, the Ravens coach had waited patiently and if he was surprised or confused about the signed conversation he had just witnessed it didn’t show on his face. The only change to his cordially blank expression was when Neil caught ahold of his own voice well enough to say, “You may speak with both of us.” The man frowned briefly, then nodded. He would undoubtedly report this back to his master, but he apparently hadn’t been given orders to argue. 

“The message I am to give you is simple, Mr. Josten: Remain an asset.” At the frowns mirrored on both Andrew’s and Neil’s faces, the man hesitated a moment before continuing in a slightly less formal tone. “The Lord expects a return on his investment when you graduate. He expects you to make a professional team. Do what you need to do in order to see that that happens.” He took a step closer, and Andrew had both knives ready before he could complete the motion. The man stopped and studied him, then Neil, before something like understanding dawned on his face. 

“I see. Perhaps then I should be more frank.” He paused, seeming to consider his words carefully. “I understand that you are used to dealing with Riko and Tetsuji,” inflection entered his voice for the first time, a curl of disdain at the mention of both names, “but _the Lord_ is not so childish or petty. You have an agreement with the Lord. He has kept his end of the bargain and you are expected to keep yours, but _your_ end of the bargain has not yet begun. My message was to remind you to be careful. The Lord wishes to see a return on his investment when the time comes.”

The words were beginning to link together and make sense in Andrew’s mind, comprehension sparking like uncertain fireflies between each sentence. 

“What you’re saying is that Ichiru isn’t going to just off him because he got a college injury,” Andrew clarified slowly. 

The man’s eyes flicked to Andrew, there was a beat of consideration, then he nodded. “What I am saying, Mr. Minyard, is that at the end of Mr. Josten’s college career, if he is not able to secure a professional contract, his agreement with the Lord will be void and I believe you both are aware of the consequences.” He looked to Neil now, holding his gaze. “I will be clear, Mr. Josten. I was not sent to reassure you. I was ordered to give you a reminder that if you are careless you _will_ see consequences _when the time comes_. However, after spending this season with the Ravens and seeing…” He stopped himself there, unwilling to give away whatever personal observations he may have made while in the Nest, cleaning up the damage that Tetsuji and Riko had delivered upon their own team. 

“You are to be an asset, Mr. Josten, not a toy to be tossed aside when the game it was built for chips its paint.” He bowed his head then, in what Andrew was sure was definitely more polite than the greeting he’d given initially. “I wish you well on your recovery, Mr. Josten, and look forward to facing your team again in the Spring Championship.”

Then, with one final glance to each of them, he turned and walked back toward the court, leaving Neil and Andrew alone in the foyer with answers they’d never asked the questions to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I made a Moriyama goon who was an actual human being... Look, I'm not sorry about it. He's an ex pro athlete and he GETS IT. And he's seen the damage that Riko and Tetsuji did to the Ravens. Ichiru is not like, a good guy or anything, but he wants his birdies to make him money and he got a guy who knows what the fuck he's doing to make sure that happens. So yeah, Neil isn't gonna get ganked because he sprains an ankle or like, gets run over by a car when he still has three years to get himself on a pro team. *shrug* I hope that makes sense XD


	4. to be here with you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil and Andrew ruminate on revelations from the little confrontation at the end of the Winter Banquet. Erik arrives! Neil and Andrew get some alone-time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello friends! Thank you so so much to all of you who are sticking it out with me, through inconsistent posting and self-indulgent scenes that very well might make sense only to me and mafia goons who also just want to sport. <33 Imma be real with you -- these next few chapters are gonna be even more self-indulgent than usual. I have a weakness for Christmas-centric scenes. It’s something about the atmosphere OKAY!? Found family + holidays!? Add in the general theme of this fic being Andrew getting closer with his fam? Just. Most of these next two chapters are just gonna be plotless nonsense that I’m writing to make myself sigh. I have no regrets.
> 
> Some good news, also! In the next couple of weeks I will be transitioning to working from home! Mostly this means my cat is going to be very pleased. BUT ALSO! It means that I will be able to write more consistently! I’m going to be finishing up the rest of the wonderful prompts sent to me on tumblr over the next couple of weeks, then I should be able to settle on a more consistent posting schedule!
> 
> Again, thank you thank you thank you SO SO MUCH to everyone who has been reading and commenting. You have no idea how much it means to me. Seeing a comment on any of my fics gives me a boost of energy and I get so excited to write more!! <3 <3
> 
> Okay, done rambling now. Y’all are the best and I hope you enjoy!

Nicky seemed oblivious to the odd air about them all the way back to Columbia, content to chatter away about Erik, the banquet, his date, Erik, the upcoming holidays, Erik, and about eighteen other random topics. Andrew was too caught up in his own thoughts to pay him even half a mind, and Nicky was used to their typical lack of participation when it came to his more prattling conversations and didn’t press either of them for contributions. Instead, the sound of Nicky’s voice was a comforting backdrop to the heavier weight of ‘ _what the fuck was that?’_ currently swirling in his chest. The white noise of it was soothing and familiar, and the lightness of his cousin’s tone kept him grounded in the here-and-now. 

Well, that and the solid presence of Neil’s hand in his own. 

Andrew wasn’t even sure who had reached for who first, but as the Ravens coach had walked away, his and Neil’s hands had linked and neither of them were quite willing to let go yet. The three or so seconds it took for Andrew to leave Neil at the passenger door and slip behind the wheel had only been permissible because it was necessary in order for them to get home. The moment the car was started and in drive, fingers were entwined, the tether reinforced. Between that touch and the reassuring cadence of Nicky’s voice from the backseat, Andrew was able to take the hour or so drive to Columbia to carefully sort through the encounter and his feelings about it. He was sure Neil was doing the same.

Once they arrived at the house and got the car unloaded, Nicky vanished off to his room to call Erik, leaving Andrew and Neil to themselves. Without needing to discuss it first, they headed into the kitchen. While Andrew filled the electric kettle with cool water for Neil’s tea, Neil moved to the freezer and pulled out the last pint of Moose Tracks. 

In the end, Neil was the one to speak first. Leaning against the counter as his tea steeped, he dragged his eyes away from the glowing red of the clock on the oven to land them on Andrew as his hands lifted and slowly signed the words, “That happened, right?”

Andrew quirked a brow up, vaguely amused at his partner’s opening for this conversation, but nodded confirmation around a bite of ice cream. 

“Why would the Ravens’ coach want to reassure me of anything?”

It was actually kind of impressive, how Neil could lace suspicion into the flick of his fingers and the weight of his hands with such incredible clarity. Even without the way his mouth tightened into a grim line, his eyes narrowed and his shoulders pressed down with wariness, he somehow managed to convey his skepticism solely with the motion of his hands. Andrew wasn’t sure if he had been taking extra lessons with Katelyn or if it was just a part of his natural expressiveness. Fucking polyglot.

As for the question, Andrew shrugged before responding in English, unwilling to set down his ice cream to sign back right now. “Who knows? Maybe he heard of your tendency to do dumb things like play with a sprained wrist” -he paused, levelling his condescension into a pointed glare until the striker rolled his eyes and gestured for him to get on with it- “and he wanted to make sure you didn’t cheat his boss out of your future millions.” He sighed, then tilted his head to study an old stain on the ceiling. “Or maybe they accidentally hired someone with a soul. Who cares?” 

When Andrew turned his gaze back on Neil, his partner’s expression was narrowed in skepticism. Andrew held his stare and waited. Finally, Neil sighed and his posture relaxed. 

“You’re right,” he signed, nodding along with the admission. “For now, I’m safe. That’s what matters.” He narrowed his eyes at him and included Andrew in with his next gesture. “ _We_ are safe.”

Andrew waited for Neil to complain at him about his protective display in front of the Ravens coach, but he didn’t. Instead, the striker checked on his tea. He removed the tea bag and picked up the mug, cradling it between his hands and holding it against his chest like he could use that warmth to chase away any lingering chill of nerves still clinging to his lungs. Andrew left Neil to the comfort of his hot tea and finished off his own ice cream. When they were both done, Neil rinsed his mug and held out his hand for Andrew’s spoon to wash as well, then the two of them headed to the bedroom. 

As Andrew began to unbutton his shirt to change into something loose to sleep in, Neil reached out and tugged on his sleeve. Andrew paused, but it was the quiet, _“wait..”_ that had him looking over at Neil. 

Those eyes caught the dim light of the room in a way that spun the blue into silver so that Andrew was looking into twin moons, glowing and soft and bright. A gift of welcome in a dark and unforgiving world. Andrew’s heart did a small skip and his throat tightened. He had to force himself not to swallow, to keep his expression blank, feigning boredom as he waited for Neil to continue with whatever had caused him to reach out to him. He wasn’t sure what Neil saw in his face, but whatever it was made the junkie smile, the expression a careless, easy glow affection. 

“I heard a song tonight. Will you listen to it?” Neil held up his phone but Andrew couldn’t look away from his eyes to see if the song was already pulled up on it. When he nodded, Neil gave another smile, this one a flash of a dimple and the flutter of a grin that would have been shy if it were anyone else. Neil Josten was many things, but _shy_ was not one of them.

After a moment a slow melody filled the room. 

The words danced around them and Andrew’s chest tightened. The air in his lungs froze then thawed then heated to burning. It was just a stupid song. One of a hundred thousand in the world that probably said the same thing in the same amount of notes and rhythms. Andrew didn’t care about it. He liked music no more or less than he liked silence, it just depended on his mood -- but he didn’t really have favorite bands or even a preferred genre. 

What _struck_ him now, though, was the way Neil was listening to the music. 

What _struck_ him was the way his eyelashes kissed his cheeks and the gentle sway of his body.

What _struck_ him was how, when he opened his eyes again, that moondrop-blue gaze snapped to his like Neil was always aware of where to find his eyes. It still blew him away how easily Neil could meet and hold his gaze. So many people avoided looking him in the eye, but Neil never had -- not even back when he had every reason to be afraid of him. 

Almost before he’d realized he’d made the decision to do so, Andrew used his free hand to pluck the phone from Neil’s hand and place it on the dresser before offering his empty palm to Neil. Neil looked at him curiously but took it, then his eyes widened as Andrew guided his other hand up to his shoulder. Once Neil had his hand in place, Andrew dropped his own and hovered it just above Neil’s waist without touching. “Yes or no, Neil.”

Neil blinked, looked from their joined hands to his hand on Andrew’s shoulder, to the phone on the dresser, then back to Andrew’s face before the light fully clicked on. Then Neil _grinned_ and Andrew realized he’d been wrong -- those eyes weren’t moons, they were stars. Neil’s smile was what held the light of the moon, and it was _brilliant_. 

“Yes.”

Andrew rested his hand on Neil’s waist and tugged him just a little bit closer, allowing them to sway in time to the music. When Neil leaned his forehead down against his, they both exhaled in a sigh at the same time and a wave of calm rolled through him.

The song ended and they continued to sway until Neil pulled away just enough so that he could yawn, which of course made Andrew reflexively do the same. Neil ended his with a small chuckle when he noticed, and leaned back to look at him with that _look_ , which was no less irritating when combined with his fatigue. Then the little jerk leaned forward and kissed his cheek. 

“Mm, c’mon sweetheart. Time for bed.” His words were sleep-slurred already but that didn’t stop the way they made Andrew’s ears burn, his cheeks feeling too warm. 

“You are exhausting,” Andrew grumbled even as he allowed Neil to slip the tie off from around his neck.

“Yeah. You like it, though.” 

Andrew only offered a soft snort in response to that, but the image of Neil’s smile continued to tease him even as they turned away from each other to change into sleep clothes. It was still there after Neil had taken his meds and they had both climbed into bed, situating themselves close but with their own space. Neil was on his back, right now the most comfortable position for his injuries, but his face was turned toward Andrew. Andrew took his position by the wall as always, laying on his side and facing Neil. Their eyes met and Neil’s mouth softened even as his eyelids drooped, weighed down by fatigue. 

“Go to sleep, rabbit,” Andrew chided, the words coming out softer and far more affectionate than he intended, but at the moment that didn’t bother him. Neil was here, he was safe, and things… things were going to be okay.

*****

Tuesday morning saw Andrew waiting at the airport with a coffee the size of New Zealand. In the event of a zombie apocalypse or World War III, whichever happened first, he’d be sure to go back for the guy who invented the _trenta_.

Neil was supervising Nicky, making sure that he didn’t paint the living room red and green while Andrew retrieved Erik and brought him back to the house. The look Neil had given him when he’d left him behind had been _truly_ pathetic, and Andrew might have felt bad for him if it hadn’t been so amusing. Nicky, who had been _so sure_ that he was going to get the house cleaned and ready all day on Sunday and Monday, had procrastinated doing anything at all until about ten minutes before dinner arrived last night. Tough luck for Neil, who’d bet that Nicky wouldn’t get his ass into gear until _after_ dinner. As penalty for that catastrophic loss, Neil had to ask Nicky how to make paper snowflakes and popcorn garland at some point before Christmas. 

Andrew fully intended on utilizing the video recording capabilities of his phone to preserve the moment forever. It would be useful ammunition should Neil decide to do anything particularly annoying over the next month. He was sure the rest of the Foxes would find it highly entertaining and Matthew Boyd would probably have fucking _kittens_.

Entertained by these thoughts, Andrew flicked through his phone as he waited, steadily making his way through his white chocolate caramel latte. He’d initially planned to time his arrival at the airport so that he wouldn’t even have to go in, but Nicky had started blasting his _Holiday Extravaganza_ playlist at an abominable hour this morning and Andrew had been eager for the escape. Hence the trenta-sized coffee and the fact that he was parked inside the airport by Arrivals, swiping through pictures on his phone for a solid half hour before he even got the text from Erik that his plan had landed.

It was another twenty-five minutes before Andrew even bothered shoving his phone into his pocket and standing. Unfortunately, he’d been on enough planes to know how much time it actually took to get off the damn plane once you touched down. He spotted Erik easily when he looked around. The man was unnecessarily tall and broad, a veritable mountain man in every sense of the word. He even had a thick blond beard that was neatly trimmed into a contained bushel around the lower half of his face that Andrew had to reluctantly admit rather suited him. He was cheerful, but in a much quieter way than Nicky. Andrew didn’t dislike him. 

“Andrew, hey! How have you been?” Erik greeted in German as he approached. He didn’t try to hug him or even shake his hand, just stopped an easy distance away and gave a small wave. Clearly, he had a better memory than his hyperactive partner. 

Better sense of boundaries too. Go figure.

Andrew shrugged in answer and jerked his head in a silent order for Erik to follow, then turned to lead them out of the airport to where the car was parked. Erik followed easily and didn’t fill the walk with chatter. Instead, he waited until they were in the car to say, “Nicky told me about what happened with Neil. He said he’s doing much better now though.”

He had known this would come up, though he never would have guessed Erik would be ballsy enough to bring it up to him directly. Erik’s little opener wasn’t a question, and Andrew was under no obligation to make this easy for him, so Andrew didn’t answer. 

Erik apparently took his silence to be an invitation for further comment, because after a beat of silence he continued with, "It is a difficult thing, being so far away from your partner when he is hurting." He let out a soft huff of breath that wasn't really a laugh but also wasn't not one either, and this time Andrew glanced over at him. 

The other man kept a mild expression, but there was something grave in the set of his mouth that told Andrew he was speaking from experience. It didn't really take an eidetic memory for Andrew to drum up exactly what that experience had to be. After all, he'd been the one to stop those guys from killing Nicky that night. He'd been the one who had almost committed murder instead. It had been the event that had gotten him put on those fucking drugs, and even knowing the consequences he still wouldn't have done a damn thing differently. Nicky annoyed the shit out of him most of the time, but he would never allow someone to lay a fucking finger on him, not if he could do something to stop it. 

The question formed and escaped him before he had the chance to snap his teeth around it and swallow it back down.

"How did you do it?" His own voice was steady and blank, his gaze solidly back on the road by the time he saw Erik look over at him in his peripheral vision. "You were an ocean away. It took you days to be able to come to him. Even when you got here, you were not met with welcome." It wasn't an apology, but Andrew could at least acknowledge that he and Aaron hadn't made the situation any easier for Erik _or_ Nicky when Erik showed up in the wake of the attack. Nicky had gotten pretty banged up and was also suffering from the mental and emotional trauma of such a vicious attack, and at the same time he'd been fulfilling his responsibilities as Andrew's guardian throughout the process of him getting arrested and tried for nearly beating those men to death.

Erik was silent for a long, tense moment -- and Andrew thought that maybe he wasn’t going to respond at all. The other man had always been friendly with them, albeit distantly so, but it was entirely possible (and understandable) if he only did that much for Nicky’s sake. He definitely didn’t owe him any answers. They weren’t friends, they weren’t family. Andrew was just this shitty asshole who had ruined his life and had taken his partner away from him for what was going to end up being _seven fucking years_.

Something cold and sharp settled in the pit of his stomach that felt uncomfortably like guilt. Andrew didn’t believe in regret. It was useless to look back and think about how things _could have_ or _should have_ been; guilt was just a byproduct of that and so had no place fucking with him. 

Before he could smother it and bite out a scathing ‘nevermind’, however, Erik took a deep breath and said, “I don’t know.”

Andrew slanted a glance at him. “Helpful,” he said dryly, returning his focus to the road.

Erik let out a soft, dry laugh and sighed, tapping his knuckles against the window. “Sorry. To be honest, from getting the phone call to arriving here, much of the time is a blur. I remember moments very clearly, like getting the phone call and stepping off the plane, but most of it is just a wash of panic. I know I called my parents but I can’t remember the conversation we had. My best friend drove me to the airport but I honestly couldn’t tell you when, if we said anything, or even if we used my car or his.”

This was something Andrew couldn’t relate to. Maybe it was a quirk of his particular memory or maybe because it was more recent than Erik’s experience, or because it was over a shorter period of time -- but Andrew could remember every second with excruciating detail. 

His hands tightened on the steering wheel, leather creaking in his grasp. 

“As for when I got here… It was terrifying, seeing him like that.” Erik’s voice had dropped a little, and Andrew recognized the cadence of someone who was only partially in the present. “It was one thing to know he was hurt, you know? It was another entirely to see the bruises and to hold him when he cried.” 

There was a heavier silence after that, stretching thickly between them like molasses oozing from a jar, too sticky to drop but with far too much heft to stay in place. Andrew didn’t look over at Erik, but he could feel the pressure of his stare.

“He was more worried about you than about what happened, you know.” Andrew’s jaw clenched so tightly it ached and he didn’t respond. When Erik realized he wasn’t going to, he continued. “You saved his life that night, and then the police took you away and he was so terrified that he wasn’t going to be able to get you back. He blamed himself.”

“It was not his fault,” Andrew bit out. “None of it was.” They both sat in the charged air of Erik’s expectant silence for a few moments before Andrew made the decision to continue. “Those fuckers never should have touched him. I intended to make them stop, and then I lost control.” 

It wasn’t something he ever would have admitted before years of introspective therapy, but he could say it now. That night, Andrew had gone outside to see what the fuck was taking Nicky so long with the garbages and to sneak in a smoke break, and he’d seen four guys attempting to kill his cousin. He’d lost it. He hadn’t called for help and he hadn’t even made the active decision to _do_ anything, he’d just _reacted_. If he had been thinking, he would have stopped before he’d gone too far. He’d have beaten them unconscious then gotten Nicky the fuck out of there, brought him and Aaron home. Killing them would have been satisfying but it would have caused more trouble than it was worth if the actual result was any kind of measuring stick. 

Erik hummed, breaking Andrew out of his thoughts, and when he glanced over the older man was studying him with a thoughtful expression that had an invasive amount of understanding in it. Andrew glared at him, then turned his gaze back to the road. 

It was silent for several minutes, then Erik said, “The hardest part, for me, was having to leave again. I could only stay for a few days, just long enough to make sure Nicky was going to be alright and try to give him as much support as I could preparing for your trial.” Erik had also been the one to send Nicky the money to pay Andrew’s bail _and_ help Nicky find the lawyer that had negotiated him into the deal with therapy instead of jail-time, but neither of them brought it up. Andrew would never say thank you for it, and Erik certainly wasn’t expecting it after all this time. 

“When it came down to it, though, I just had to trust in his strength. Nicky is…” he chuckled, and there was such _fondness_ in that sound that Andrew felt that uncomfortable clench of guilt again. “Nicky is sweet, and sometimes ridiculous. He is not exactly a man who thinks things through before he jumps headlong into them. He makes mistakes, but he’s genuine and he has a capacity for love unlike anyone else I have ever met. After all he’s been through, his first instinct is always, _always_ to love someone. Even if they do not deserve that love.” 

There was a still, quiet rage in Erik’s voice that ran so deep even Andrew’s self-worth knew better than to assume it was directed at him. He and Aaron may have been the reasons that Nicky and Erik were having to be apart for so long -- but the ones who had really _hurt_ Nicky, the ones who had never been deserving of his love and desperate craving for approval, were his parents. Maria and Luther had never deserved him, and they would never truly pay the price for failing him. It was an imbalance that Andrew did not like to think about. 

Erik must not like to think about it either, because he took a slow, shaking breath and let it out like he was trying to expel the very _concept_ of the Hemmicks from his mind. 

“He is also incredibly resilient,” he finally continued after the pause. “Above all that, though, he is my partner. I offered to bring him home with me, you know. I offered to find a way to bring the three of you back to Germany. I didn’t know how I would do it, but I was willing to try.” Andrew didn’t bother showing his surprise at that because there was no point -- there was no way it could have worked, no way the courts would have allowed him to leave the country even on the drugs. _Especially_ on the drugs.

Instead he said, “Nicky refused.”

Erik nodded. “He didn’t want to pull you away from everything you knew and drag you to a country where you barely spoke the language.” At the time, their German hadn’t even been conversational so that was fair. 

Andrew sighed, changing lanes to prepare for the upcoming exit. “Is this the longform way of telling me to trust my partner?” 

The other man chuckled, not put off by the dry impatience. “Yes and no, or perhaps more like ‘yes, and then some’.” He seemed to think about it for a moment, then continued with, “You should trust your partner, but one thing that I learned from that whole, horrible experience was that he was not alone.”

Andrew frowned, tearing his gaze away from the road long enough to direct the expression at Erik. “Two assholes who never learned how to show appreciation for him do not count.”

Erik shrugged, a small smile tugging on his lips that made Andrew’s eye twitch. It was entirely too knowing and Andrew did not like it. 

“I don’t know about that. You protected him that night, Andrew. And Aaron made sure he was always in the same room as Nicky or within shouting distance while I was there -- and I have a feeling that didn’t change when I left. You two always cared about him. You always appreciated him. Perhaps you didn’t know how to show it, but he knew, and so did I. I knew you two would be there for him, or at the very least -- I decided to have faith in it. Your partner, Neil, he is not alone now. _You_ are not alone in caring for him. You have Nicky and your brother and all of your Foxes. Trust your partner, and allow yourself to realize that neither of you are alone. It may not cure the fear, but it will ease it, if you let it.”

The last leg of the drive was quiet, Andrew having plenty to think about and Erik being astute enough to let him have that silence to his thoughts. When they arrived at the house, Andrew hung back as Nicky all but flew down the porch steps and wrapped himself around Erik. He watched their reunion, and then his gaze drifted past them to where Neil was leaning in the front door. He soaked up the warm smile on his face, and was able to watch the exact moment when Neil refocused from the other couple to him. He got to see the way that already fond smile softened to something else entirely, the moment he saw _him_. Neil didn’t call to him, didn’t beckon him closer, didn’t ask anything of him -- he just… looked, and he smiled, happy to see him, like it was just that simple.

Taking a closer look at the warmth crackling in his own chest, Andrew had to concede that -- sometimes, anyway -- perhaps it was.

*****

The house was comfortably noisy at all times from the moment Erik arrived. Even when Nicky wasn’t chattering on about this or that, the tv was on -- or the music in Nicky’s room was conspicuously loud. Andrew was less annoyed by this than he would have anticipated. When attempting to name the exact location on Andrew’s Range of Tolerance, Neil had suggested he was somewhere between _begrudgingly amused_ and _affectionately resigned_. Andrew had scowled at the use of ‘affectionate’ regarding Nicky shaking the house with upbeat post-disco whatever the fuck that was while he banged his boyfriend, but he also couldn’t say that he was entirely _wrong_.

The annoying thing about personal growth was that you didn’t get to pick and choose parts of yourself to stay a callous bitch. Care and consideration was a fucking infection and he’d given it to himself so he really had no one else to blame. Andrew had been learning to accept his (ugh) _feelings_ when it came to Neil and his brother and himself -- and that meant he also had to acknowledge certain soft things inside himself regarding Nicky as well. As such, that meant he couldn’t help but recognize that he was glad to see Nicky so damn happy -- so damn _genuinely_ happy, not just the cheerful mask he’d been wearing for too many years. 

So Andrew didn’t begrudge him a little bit of indulgence, even if it got obnoxious from time to time. 

That didn’t mean he wasn’t absolutely _relishing_ the silence when Nicky and Erik decided to go out for dinner on Erik’s second night at the house. The second the front door shut, Andrew actually closed his eyes to savor the way all sound died in a way that Andrew knew they were absolutely, perfectly, beautifully alone. The quiet surrounded him like his favorite blanket and he just wanted to wrap it tighter around himself, clinging to this peace for as long as possible. Maybe if it stayed quiet for long enough, the pounding in his head would go away.

A quiet huff of laughter brought him out of his moment too soon and he opened his eyes to slant a glare over to where Neil was leaning against the kitchen counter, smirking around the rim of his mug of tea. 

“Something funny, Josten?”

“I wonder if Nicky realizes that his Christmas present is you putting up with him for the entirety of winter break,” Neil mused, still holding the mug right up by his face so that the steam of it could warm his cheeks and his nose. 

“Nicky doesn’t register something as a gift unless it is wrapped, Neil. At least attempt to _feign_ intelligence from time to time.”

Neil just hummed, nodding solemnly as he brought the mug down to cradle against his chest. “Scathingly using the word ‘feign’. You still have a headache then.”

Andrew just stared at him for a long moment. 

“What?” Neil frowned in confusion, because as smart as he could be sometimes, he was still a fucking idiot. 

Andrew took a deep breath and pressed his fingertips into the bridge of his nose high up near the inner corners of his eyes. He shook his head, and then dropped his hands and moved to stand in front of Neil. Despite the curiosity on Neil’s face, he didn’t hesitate to make space for him, setting the mug down and relaxing his posture open so that Andrew could comfortably crowd him. 

There was once a time where Andrew never had to question what expression he was wearing. It was either dispassionate boredom or a manic, drug-induced grin -- one or the other, with no inbetween. Even now, with most people, Andrew could be fairly confident that he gave nothing away even if he _was_ thinking about something deeper than what his features _should_ be showing. 

With Neil, though…? With Neil it was different. With Neil it had been different even before he’d come off the drugs. He wasn’t sure if it was because Neil had gotten that good at reading him or if he was just that bad at shielding himself around the nuisance of a striker. 

Still, he shouldn’t have been surprised when Neil lifted a hand and traced the air over his brow like he was reading his emotions like braille. He shouldn’t have been surprised when Neil’s mouth softened and his eyes warmed. He shouldn’t have been surprised when Neil’s _entire body_ relaxed within the circle of his arms. They weren’t even touching yet. Andrew had blocked him in against the counter, a hand braced to each side of his hips, several inches still between them that was warming with the mingled heat of their bodies. 

He shouldn’t have been, but he was. He was taken off-guard every single damn time by the way Neil reacted to him. 

Neil’s fingertips brushed over his brow, thumbs stroking down his temples in a feather-light touch before pressing more firmly when Andrew didn’t pull away or otherwise tell him to stop. Before he quite realized what his partner was doing, Neil was already gently massaging his temples down to the back of his jaw and back up again. He kept the touch just this side of firm, enough to soothe but not enough to hurt or control, and it felt _so good_ that Andrew’s eyes closed again, a long sigh slipping free. Andrew didn’t need to see the satisfied little smile on Neil’s lips to know it was there. He could hear it in the approving hum that buzzed in the other man’s throat. Andrew rummaged up just enough energy to grumble an inarticulate admonishment only to have it wash away under a quiet groan of pleasure as those _hands_ slid down to his neck, kneading and rubbing small circles into the tight muscles. 

Andrew let his head drop down onto Neil’s shoulder with a sigh. It distantly occurred to him that he couldn’t remember the last time someone else had given him any kind of massage. That would require him to allow someone to put their hands on him and, well, he was currently leaning on the only true exception to that very firm boundary. He might have allowed Renee to help him with his shoulder one time after a sparring session, but that was it.

“You’re really tight,” Neil murmured against his hair, his breath just kissing at his temple. “No wonder you have a headache.”

That wasn’t a question, so Andrew didn’t see the need to answer. 

“I didn’t think Nicky’s been all that bad, all things considered. Though apparently he wants to take you Christmas shopping tomorrow.”

Still not a question, but Andrew was feeling benevolent enough to grunt an expression of annoyance. 

Neil chuckled, his thumbs gently working at the tense coil of muscles at the base of his scalp. “Are you going to go with him?” 

The question was lightly stated but Andrew had a sneaking suspicion that it was only a prelude to the _real_ question -- which would be Neil asking Andrew _to_ go with Nicky. It was incredibly aggravating that people were so eager to try and use Neil against him like this. Blatant manipulation, it was, and completely unfair. He wasn’t sure which was more annoying though -- them having pulled the trick before anyone really knew Neil was his weakness, thinking Neil had some freaky power as opposed to Andrew being helplessly gay, or them pulling it now because they _knew_ better. 

Andrew wasn’t willing to pull away from Neil’s soothing hands to glare at him, so he snorted his skepticism. 

He could _hear_ the smirk in Neil’s responding hum. 

“Nicky wants to spend some time with you,” he said with a small shrug, now working his hands up the back of Andrew’s head, nails gently scritching at his scalp. 

“We live together. He spends plenty of time with me every damn day,” Andrew pointed out. 

“Not just the two of you. He said he needed your help with some last-minute shopping and wanted the chance to spend some time one-on-one with you.”

“That sounds like a recipe for disaster. He is probably going to try to set me up for some kind of awkward heart-to-heart.” This time, Andrew did pull away enough to level a look at Neil. It was a good one, filled with dry skepticism and the slightest hint of condescension -- because really, Neil should know better. 

Neil had let his hands fall away when he pulled back, but after a moment he rested them on his shoulders. He cocked his head to the side and raised his eyebrows, undaunted. “Yeah, probably.”

“And you want me to let him?”

When Neil just shrugged and plucked at the sleeves of Andrew's shirt near where his hands were resting, Andrew just narrowed his eyes. For a man who could be such a proficient fucking liar when he wanted to be he sure as fuck wasn't all that subtle. There was definitely something more going on inside that head of his, but Andrew didn't have the patience for whatever mysterious looks Neil would give him if he tried to ask about it.

Andrew sighed. "I am going to regret this, aren't I?"

The corner of Neil's mouth quirked up in a little smirk and Andrew both wanted to kiss it and put his fist through it. Instead, he lifted one hand and pressed his thumb to the divot in the corner of that teasing mouth and sighed. 

“I thought you didn’t feel regret,” Neil challenged light. Then, when Neil turned his face just slightly to kiss his palm, Andrew glared but didn't pull his hand away.

"If he does not make it back from this venture alive, you will be the one who takes the blame," he warned instead of actually answering that bit of sass.

Neil had the audacity to kiss his hand again and Andrew pulled it away with a scoff of disgust, stepping back with a roll of his eyes as Neil laughed.

"Hey, if you can get him into the trunk before you come home I'll help you hide the body." Neil gave such a nonchalant shrug Andrew had to wonder if he wasn't at least partly serious. After a moment, he decided that he probably was. As callous as Neil could be, Andrew didn't think he would actually be so casual about him legit murdering Nicky, but he might help him hide the body if it suited his own purposes as well. If it was someone else, someone Neil didn't care about _at all_ , then Andrew had no doubt that Neil would help him hide the body. He was a morbidly loyal sort of fuck like that. It was one of the things Andrew found so unfortunately attractive about him.

"You will owe me," he finally said. "If I am going to put up with Nicky's 'holiday spirit' for an entire shopping trip I expect to get something out of it."

Neil shrugged. "Name your price." Oh and he was so nonchalant now, was he? 

"I will let you know." This time, when Neil flashed that cheeky grin, Andrew gave in and kissed it away.

It could have been a quick thing, except for that Andrew could never seem to _just_ kiss Neil. Even when they never moved past the press of mouths and breath and the thrum of their heartbeats, it was never _just_ a kiss. 

After all, there was a reason that Andrew was very conscientious about when and where he indulged in how much he always wanted to touch Neil. While he and Neil were beginning to develop smaller, more casual touches, they were still private things charged with far larger, far deeper notions. Care and affection just were not _casual_ for people like Andrew and Neil. The more volatile things like _want_ and _need_ certainly weren’t, either, and even at the house in Columbia Andrew liked to keep their exchanges behind the locked door of their bedroom. 

Except when they were alone, and _right now_ they just so happened to be alone. When Andrew pressed his lips to Neil’s he felt Neil catch his breath and he decided to indulge. 

There was just something far too satisfying about the way Neil melted under his touch. It always started with Neil’s breath, just the slightest catch when Andrew brough their mouths together. When Andrew preserved the distance between them, it was a physical, charged thing that occupied the otherwise empty space. That one breath would catch and hold, tightening until Andrew eventually snapped or had the willpower to pull away. Then there were the times where Andrew could not be bothered with distance, and when that breath caught it instantly stumbled into a sigh as Andrew pulled Neil closer, got his hands on him, and made it very clear he had no intention of letting go.

This was one of those times where Andrew could not be bothered with the distance. He leaned in for the kiss and when that small, perfect breath caught, Andrew chased it further into Neil’s mouth. He drank down the sigh that followed and pinned Neil to the counter with his hips, his hands sliding around the other man’s waist to curl against his back and gather the heat of him close. 

“Hands,” he growled against his partner’s lips, and the word wasn’t the warning it would have been a year ago. This time it was a demand. “Now, Josten.”

Neil made positively fucking _sinful_ noise as Andrew dropped his mouth to his throat, because he wasn’t the _only_ one who could play that fucking game. “Wh-where?” he gasped out and Andrew shivered at the rasp in his voice. 

“Skin. Now.” He did not wait for Neil to comply and instead returned his mouth to the choice bit of bare skin he’d been playing with, scraping his teeth before sucking lightly to bring a flush to the surface. There was something all too satisfying about the way he could feel the buzz of Neil’s pleasure being voiced against his tongue. He thought maybe he was beginning to understand the junkie’s neck fetish. 

“Andrew..! Can I..?” Neil made another _sound_ that inexplicably had its own _taste_ and tugged at the bottom of his shirt. 

Becoming impatient now with how badly he was craving the feel of Neil’s hands on his skin, Andrew growled against his neck and dragged one of his own hands around to grab one of Neil’s wrists. He then pulled it determinedly under his shirt. Neil’s fingers hesitated for only a moment when they touched his skin, and then they pressed more firmly against his side and it was Andrew’s turn for his breath to catch. 

“Yes,” he hissed against Neil’s neck, nipping at the spot before bringing their mouths together again. “Yes,” he said again, but there was more sigh to the shape of the word than anything else. Either way, Neil seemed to understand because his other hand joined the first, slipping under his shirt and trailing along his sides, staying within the zone that Andrew had indicated. For that alone, Andrew kissed him again. 

And then again. 

And again.


	5. christmas angels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nightmares, Aaron is a Christmas Angel, and the gift of the season.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello friends!! I know, I know ~ I was all "hey look, I bet I'll be more consistent now that I'm working from home!" and then gave you another like... month wait before I posted again XD I love you all so much for your patience with me you have no frickin' idea. See here's the thing... I got excited... about all the access I was gonna have to write... and then I signed up for like a billion winter events. SO I AM WRITING! Just... no one gets to see it. Well, if you follow me on Tumblr you've seen some of the writing I've been doing for the past month or so, cuz I've also been doing quick lil drabbles. 
> 
> ANYWAY!
> 
> Thank you so SO much for all your kind comments and kudos and how encouraging y'all are. I love you <3 <3 
> 
> Chapter Warnings: Nightmares, panic attacks, mentions of Drake (no specific mentions of the abuse, but his name does pop up and the abuse reference is implied).

Darkness pressed in around him, a heavy weight on his only recent return to consciousness. Even before he opened his eyes, Andrew knew it was far too early. He could _sense_ the distance of the dawn, which only ever meant that he was up too late or waking too early. Somewhere in the jumble of not-quite-coherent thoughts and memories, Andrew knew that he didn’t even have a reason to be awake. It was winter break, maybe a few days before Christmas. There was nothing planned for what he thought today was, and even if there were it definitely wouldn’t be anything that had to happen before noon, let alone in the swollen, breathless hours before dawn. 

So why the ever-living fuck was he awake?

It took too much effort to peel his eyes open and Andrew gave up after only one attempt. Instead, he shifted slightly to be able to wrap his arm more securely around his pillow and bury his face into a new section of it that was still fresh and cool and smelled of their detergent. He inhaled deeply and willed his body to relax, willed himself to sink into the mattress. Distantly, he recognized the weight of a body next to him but even as that proximity registered the back of his mind filled in that it was only Neil. 

Andrew might have drifted back to sleep, then. Had he woken just from his own restlessness or maybe a shift in the room’s pressure or even the taunting of his own dreams, he probably could have buried his face in the pillow and let sleep take him. 

But instinct or maybe just the few extra moments it took for him to catalogue the space around him and recognize that it _was_ Neil beside him, was enough for Andrew to hear it again -- the thing that had caused him to wake in the first place. 

This time it registered as more than just an unidentified stimulus. 

Soft, sharp gasps. A tight, strained whimper. Wordless murmurs intoned with the panic of a plea. They weren’t loud sounds, but in the stillness of a bedroom Andrew had never needed more than the mildest of disturbances to break out of sleep. 

With a slow, deep breath, Andrew turned his face out of his pillow and peeled his eyes open. Thanks to the silvery din of moonlight creeping through the window, there was just enough light for Andrew to make out Neil’s sleeping form beside him. He was curled on his side facing in toward the bed, toward Andrew, and he had one hand curled into a claw near his throat. Even in the dimness of the room and through the haze of his bleary, sleep-caked eyes, Andrew could see how badly the other man was trembling. Half-whimpered gasps caught and stuttered between clenched teeth, the sound so light and so shallow it barely counted as breathing.

Andrew didn’t know what nightmare had him caught tonight, but he didn’t need to know to put a stop to it. Perhaps other men might prefer to be left to their terrors, to see them through in hopes of getting some rest in the valleys between unconscious assaults -- but neither Andrew nor Neil were such men. Both of them preferred sleepless nights to haunted ones, so after taking a moment to rub the last bit of grogginess from his eyes, Andrew pushed himself up to one elbow and pressed two fingers to Neil’s shoulder in a feather-light touch. 

“Neil,” he murmured steadily, grimacing at the growl of sleep still clinging to his voice. He cleared his throat softly and tried again. “Neil, rabbit. Wake up.”

They were both light sleepers, too. However, in this case while Andrew’s words and light touch was enough to wake him, it wasn’t enough to fully pull him out of the nightmare. 

Usually it was Andrew who had the tendency to wake violently, especially when touched. This time Neil was the one who jerked away, his eyes snapping open and instantly going far too wide as he twisted and jammed his hand under the pillow, reaching desperately for a gun that wasn’t going to be there. A sharp breath hissed out through his teeth as the too-quick, too-violent motions put unexpected strain on the muscles and bones that were still healing and currently stiff from sleep and the prolonged tension of a nightmare. 

Andrew instantly gave him as much space as he could, pulling back and sitting up just enough to be able to press himself against the wall. He kept his hands visible, raised and open, palms out. 

“Neil,” he said again. He put a bit more volume into the syllable but cut out any urgency, keeping his tone as steady and stagnant as possible. “Neil.”

When Neil looked at him, shoulders heaving where he hunched in a half-twisted heap near the head of the bed, Andrew continued in a slow, even cadence. “It’s Andrew. It’s only you and me in the room. We are at the house in Columbia. The door is locked. You are safe. You were having a nightmare.” He repeated this twice more as Neil struggled to fill his lungs with enough air to reach his brain and fully wake him up.

The whole time, Andrew kept himself pressed back against the wall, his gaze steady on his partner and his posture as relaxed and non-threatening as possible. He _wasn’t_ relaxed, not really. It was hard to be relaxed when there was panic stretching Neil’s pupils so wide the blue was only a shimmer of silver around the edges of ink-black pits of fear and his partner’s body shook with that terror, but that tension wasn’t going to help Neil. His calm might. 

It took a few minutes, then Neil finally took in a slower, steadier breath that seemed somewhat more conscious. Still, Andrew wasn’t sure if his partner was fully awake until he heard the tight, strangled, “Drew?”

“Yes,” Andrew breathed without hesitation, and though he didn’t consciously permit it, relief slipped into his tone. He waited as Neil took another couple of slow, jagged breaths. But when Neil turned to press his forehead to the mattress, now curled on his knees like a child in a storm shelter, and let out a soft, muffled whimper against the sheets, Andrew couldn’t stay back any longer. 

He moved slowly, turning away from the wall and shifting up toward the head of the bed before reaching out and resting his hand on the back of Neil’s neck. Neil gasped, the sound catching on the end of what might have turned out to be a sob if Neil had let it finish out. Instead, he held it in his throat, holding his breath even as the rest of his body shook. 

“Hey,” Andrew said softly, his voice low and steady -- not a whisper but too clearly spoken to be a murmur. He squeezed, locking his fingers around the back of his rabbit’s neck in an anchor to keep at least some part of him tethered to the here and now, to the truth of this room, to the waking reality, to him, _Andrew_. “You are safe. You are at the house in Columbia. The only people in this room are you and me, and I will personally dismantle anyone who even fucking _thinks_ of getting to you again. Do you hear me, rabbit? You are Neil Josten. You are safe. You are at the house in Columbia, _my_ house. You are in my room, my bed, and no one is going to fucking touch you again. You are safe. You are here.” 

He took a slow breath and gave another squeeze. “I’ve got you.”

Andrew didn’t know if Neil could even understand what he was saying in the state he was in, but his words or his tone or the heavy hand on the back of his neck seemed to break through the clutch of panic caging him in. His body shuddered, then the tension dissipated. Neil took a slow, raspy breath, and then another. After he’d managed five more, Andrew pulled him up using the grip he still maintained on the back of his neck in tandem with a bracing grasp on his shoulder. 

This time, when Neil met his eyes, there was more blue than black and Andrew knew Neil was seeing _him_ , too. The defensive, protective beast that had risen unbidden in his chest lowered its hackles and drew back. Andrew released his grip on Neil and leaned back against the wall to study him in silence. After a long moment of contemplation, Andrew then lifted one arm in invitation and was not surprised when Neil slotted himself under it, molding himself to Andrew’s side like he was crafted to fit there. 

When Andrew’s demons haunted him, he almost always needed space. Neil wasn’t so different from him, and sometimes that’s exactly what he needed as well. But then there were times, when Neil’s monsters clawed out through the cracks in their hasty tombs, that he needed something different. Sometimes, when Neil was feeling weak and beaten and scared and stranded -- he needed to be _held_. 

Even six months ago, Andrew would not have been able to accommodate that need even if he’d wanted to -- and he definitely wouldn’t have wanted to. But a lot could change in six months. A lot _had_ changed -- with Neil, with Andrew, with their relationship. They were broken things, he and Neil. Cracked, damaged, rough and shattered creatures that were both haunted and healed by the remnants of their own humanity. There were always going to be bad nights, bad days, bad _weeks_ , for both of them. Andrew was under no illusions that that would ever end. Two, five, ten, twenty-five years from now they would still both be having bad nights, bad days, bad weeks. 

But two, five, ten, twenty-five years from now he knew they would also be there to hold each other up on those days as best as they were able. 

It was a thought that still made Andrew pause. It terrified him sometimes, and sometimes just pissed him off. More and more though, it gave him a sense of something frighteningly close to peace. A future with Neil was starting to become less like some strange alternate reality he wasn’t allowed to want and more like an inevitable truth. 

Andrew was beginning to find, more and more, that he was more than okay with that.

They sat together like that for a long time, until Andrew felt Neil shift against him then pull away slightly to ease a stiffness caused by the position. Andrew let him go without protest but studied him for a moment before he asked, “Sleep?”

He wasn’t surprised when Neil made a face and shook his head. 

Andrew only nodded and pulled away from the wall, sliding off the bed and stretching until his back gave a satisfying pop. They ended up in the living room, Neil curled up on the chaise watching tv on mute while Andrew occupied his usual spot on the other side of the couch with the book he was currently reading. For the first half-hour or so, he didn’t allow himself to get sucked into the story, although it was a good one, instead keeping the majority of his attention on the man on the other end of the couch. He paid attention to the slump of his body and the steady cadence of his breathing until he was sure he was sufficiently distracted by the soothing colors of pastel fondant and sugar cookies. Only then did he allow himself to get sucked into the trans-dimensional library of his novel.

It was as the rosy milk lighting of pre-dawn began to seep through the blinds and touch the room that he returned to the living room, jerked into reality by a familiar whimper. 

Neil had fallen asleep somewhere between when Andrew had settled his attention back to his book and the end of the third consecutive episode of the baking show he’d been watching -- because on the screen Netflix was asking if he was still watching. Andrew watched him for a moment to gauge if it was just the plagues of discomfort or if the monsters had returned from their shadows to haunt him again. At first it looked like whatever had caused that first distress of sound had passed, then Neil flinched hard in his sleep and let out another sound. He shook his head, lips moving in an unintelligible murmur as he curled himself into a tighter huddle in the corner of the chaise. 

When Neil began to jerk and twist, his fingers clawing at his own arms and his throat and his shoulders, Andrew slipped off his glasses and closed his book, setting it aside so he could move over to Neil. Full-well knowing the effect of being woken by someone looming over you, Andrew instead moved around the chaise to crouch at the arm. He rested a hand lightly on Neil’s elbow and gave him a small shake. 

“Neil,” he called evenly. 

Neil woke with a gasp, jerking back. His eyes were too wide, the blue of them too bright in the pre-morning light. He looked like a tortured spirit like that, his Neil. 

Andrew swallowed down the acid in his throat at that thought and held out a hand, palm-up. 

Neil stared at it for a long moment before he finally unclenched one hand from around his own _throat_ and instead placed it, trembling, in Andrew’s palm. Andrew held Neil’s gaze as he curled his fingers around Neil’s hand and stood, tugging steadily until Neil unfurled himself and stood up with him. Then, keeping them linked hand-in-hand, he brought him into the kitchen. 

By the time Andrew had filled the electric kettle, Neil was present enough to realize where they were and what Andrew was doing. He tugged his hand free and wandered to the tea cabinet to choose his own tea, which soothed something knotted in Andrew’s chest. It was a small thing, really, but it allowed Andrew to release a breath he hadn’t been fully aware he’d been holding. He pulled down Neil’s favorite mug (this hand-painted thing covered in foxes and exy racquets and Neil’s number 10 -- a random gift from Nicky over the summer that Neil had rolled his eyes at but also regularly brought with him back and forth between the dorms and the house in Columbia) and set it on the counter beside the electric kettle. When Neil came over with his tea selection, Andrew met his eyes with a silent question.

_Tell me what you need._

Neil took a shaky breath in and then let it out. The edge of his mouth turned up in the ghost of a smile and he looked from Andrew over his shoulder toward the living room with a small tilt of his head. 

_Give me a minute._

If there was one thing that Andrew understood, it was the need to take a minute alone to reconcile your vulnerability. So he didn’t hesitate or question him, just nodded and returned to the living room, leaving Neil to himself. 

Andrew occupied himself by turning off the tv and then crossing over to the window to tug the curtains fully closed over the slatted blinds, shutting out the hazy pre-dawn light and leaving the room with only the warm glow of the lamp on the chaise-side end table. Instead of reclaiming his position on the couch he crossed to the front door and shoved his feet into his shoes so that he could drift out to the front porch for a smoke. His cigarettes were already in the pocket of his coat and he easily pilfered his preferred lighter from Neil’s, which always hung right next to his own.

Neil didn’t join him on the porch and when Andrew finished his cigarette he went back inside. He settled onto the couch and picked up his book, but put it down again without opening it at the soft scuff of bare feet on cool hardwood. When he looked over, Neil was standing just inside the living room, mug cradled in his hands, looking still far too much like a spector. 

Andrew gave himself a moment, then made a decision.

"Come here,” he said, gesturing with a small jerk of his chin. He adjusted his position on the couch, moving to the chaise and leaving a space for Neil between his legs. There was a distinct shakiness to Neil’s breath and the careful way he walked that had Andrew needing to swiftly muzzle the beast that roared up protectively in his chest. It was not pain that was making Neil move like that -- it was fear. Not fear of Andrew or anything physically here in the house, but the kind of fear that clung after a childhood of holding your breath and cowering and desperately trying not to draw the wrong attention. Even though Neil was awake, the nightmare wasn’t behind him yet and Andrew understood that kind of unsteadiness all too well. 

He held his hand out and gently pulled the mug from Neil’s hand when he made it over to the side of the chaise, holding it for him as Neil situated himself. Once he was settled against his chest, Andrew returned the mug and pulled the blanket over, draping it over both of their legs. It was a violently colorful, fluffy monstrosity of Nicky’s, but in the dim glow of the single lamp on the end table it wasn’t terribly offensive to the eyes and it would offer a layer of protection against the chill. 

Neil sighed and shivered, his hands shaking as he lifted the tea to his lips to make himself take a sip. Andrew instinctively wrapped his arms around him a little bit tighter. He’d only ever had two responses to the few things he cared about -- push them away or clutch them close. Often, he tried to do both at the same time with mixed results. Faced with Neil’s vulnerability and the way he leaned into his hold, though, the only option right now was to pull him closer. 

“Can you tell me what you need?” he murmured quietly against his temple before placing a small kiss there. It was a question they were trying to use with each other on bad days. Even if all Neil was going to be able to give him was a shake of his head, it would be something. 

For a long moment, there wasn’t even that. Neil trembled and stared into his tea, silent but for the occasional tight, shaking breath. Andrew didn’t push. He didn’t ask the question again or attempt to get any other kind of answer out of him. Maybe what Neil needed most right now was silence. Or maybe it was warmth. Those, at least, he could give. 

Finally, Neil took a deeper, more present breath and shifted slightly in his arms. Andrew immediately loosened his hold in case Neil no longer wanted the contact, but all his partner did was twist slightly and tilt his head back to look up at him. Those blue eyes were too haunted, too hollow, and the grim set of his mouth was a pull of pure exhaustion. He still managed to form the question with the furrow of his brows and the weak lift of his lips as he flipped hand across his own field of vision, fingers trembling as he molded them into f-shape for a partial sign, his other hand otherwise occupied as it cradled his mug against his chest. 

“Distract me?”

Andrew considered for a moment. He could turn on the tv, but the idea of flashing lights wasn’t appealing. Besides he wanted… he _needed_ to do more, if Neil would let him. He looked around, his gaze falling on his abandoned book. An idea occurred to him and he nodded, kissing the side of Neil’s head. 

“Yes. Drink your tea, rabbit.”

As Neil readjusted himself again and took a sip of his tea, Andrew withdrew one arm from under the blanket to retrieve the book. He pulled his glasses free from where he’d left them hooked into the front cover and unfolded them to put them on. Instead of opening the book to his earmarked page he started at the beginning. He kept his voice low and steady, but seeing as they were pressed so close he didn’t really need to speak loudly anyway. He didn’t try to do anything fancy, didn’t attempt any voices or extra inflection -- he just _read_. It probably sucked, honestly, but as he read he felt Neil finally, _finally_ begin to relax.

*****

Andrew received a text from Aaron late in the morning on Christmas Eve, though upon receiving it he had to double-check the date.

**Other Minyard:**  
_what do you guys want for lunch?_

**You:**  
_thought you weren’t coming until Saturday_

At least, that had been the plan. Since they had gone up to visit Katelyn’s family first they were staying there through Christmas and would drive down on Saturday so they could spend New Years and the rest of the winter break with them. It would be a full house for the last couple weeks, but all of them lived in dorms for the rest of the year so it wasn’t anything they weren’t used to. 

**Other Minyard:**  
_change of plans  
don’t tell Nicky tho -- its a surprise_

**You:**  
_you are becoming disgustingly sentimental_

**Other Minyard:**  
_fuck you  
do you want food or not?_

Andrew rolled his eyes and shot off a quick message for Aaron to keep his fucking jockstrap on before pushing off the couch and heading toward the kitchen -- which had been overtaken by Nicky for all of his holiday activities. Andrew had so far been able to avoid being dragged into any of them, partially because he’d managed to keep away from the danger zone and partially because he’d shamelessly tossed Neil under the bus and let his partner take the brunt of Nicky’s holiday cheer. It was survival of the fittest, after all, and Neil was moving slower these days. 

Besides, he’d already agreed to the paper snowflakes, he may as well occupy the rest of Nicky’s festive fixation. 

Nicky had decorated the kitchen with the fervor and dedication that some people decorated the outside of their homes. Christmas lights surrounded the window and lined the cabinets and appliances; dollar-store figurines of snowmen and pudgy little elves dressed in green infested the countertops; paper snowflakes and other cut-out images of reindeer, Christmas trees, and the entire Santa family were stuck to the windows, walls, and cabinet doors with double-sided tape. He had even taken red and green streamers to the doorway to create what he called a ‘gateway into Christmasland’. 

Yeah.

Currently, Nicky had Neil and Eerik around the kitchen table, where they were all decorating fucking gingerbread cookies. Andrew spotted one absolutely slathered with red icing with little black ‘x’s for eyes and scooped it up, biting off a chunk of the head as he surveyed the rest. Judging by the cookies nearest Neil and their general theme, he was pretty sure his partner had made the one he was currently snacking on. 

Nicky beamed up at him from where he was giving a cookie a fluffy white icing beard. “Andrew! Nice of you to join us. There’s still plenty of--”

“No.” He took another bite out of the cookie, finishing off the head. “What do you guys want for lunch. I’m ordering in.”

“Oh! We should all go out for lunch!” Nicky suggested, almost whacking Erik in the face with the piping bag. Erik gently removed it from his hand as Nicky went on. “We can stop by the store on the way back and each pick out a new ornament for the tree.” 

Andrew was about to illustrate how terrible an idea that was when Erik proved for the eightieth time that week how well-matched he was for Nicky. 

“Let’s just order in today, babe,” he said as he set the piping bag on the cookie sheet they were using as a supplies tray. “We can go out tomorrow afternoon and make a treat of it. We can even call Aaron and Katelyn they can pick their own ornaments through a video call.”

Nicky looked at Erik like he’d just hung the stars and hand-painted him a cloudless night sky to appreciate them by. “That’s a _perfect_ idea. Fuck yeah, this is going to be the best Christmas ever.”

For his part, Neil just smirked down at the cookie he was working on, which was drenched in a weird green color that was somewhere between sage and puke. Andrew watched him pick up a piping bag filled with black icing and draw little ‘x’s for the eyes in exactly the same way the red one had had before he’d bitten it’s head off. As if the idiot could feel his stare, Neil looked up at him and raised a challenging brow as if to say, _Is there a problem?_

Andrew just snorted and bit off one of the red cookie’s arms. 

“Well?” he said once he’d swallowed his bite. “What do you want for lunch? I have no problem ordering for myself and leaving the rest of you to figure it out.”

Apparently Christmas tacos were a thing and became the unanimous choice as soon as Nicky suggested it. Andrew sent the order off to Aaron before deciding to occupy the chair beside Neil to wait. His decision was entirely sugar-based, as the seat beside Neil put him closest to the cookies that Neil had been decorating -- all of which followed the theme of the red one he’d already devoured and the green one Neil had just completed. Instead of decorating them with faces and costumes piped on with icing and garnished with little candies, Neil had chosen to use a piping bag only to do the little ‘x’s for the eyes. There was no point in using a piping bag for the rest of the cookie, considering all Neil was doing was getting a giant glob of icing on a spatula and smearing it a quarter-inch thick so it covered the entire surface. 

“These look like a blind kindergartener made them,” Andrew commented dryly as he picked up a blue one and snapped off a leg. He popped it into his mouth, savoring how much icing was caked on it. 

Neil gave him a knowing smirk that Andrew did not appreciate. “I’m a collegiate athlete, not an artist,” was his unbothered retort as he set the green one aside and picked up another blank gingerbread man. 

“Clearly.” He snapped off the other arm and surveyed the spread of cookies on the table, decorated and undecorated. “Why are all of yours dead?”

“Because you shouldn’t eat things that are still alive. Seems rude.” Neil shrugged and considered his options before dipping his spatula into a bowl of eye-searing pink. Once he had the cookie thoroughly coated he picked up his piping bag of black frosting and drew on the x’d-out eyes, then a weird little triangle on the forehead between them.

“Was that one stabbed in the face or something?” Andrew asked before he could stop himself.

Neil considered his work thoughtfully. “No, it’s a horn. This one’s a unicorn.”

Andrew stared at his partner, then at the… unicorn gingerbread man cookie? “A unicorn,” he said dumbly. 

“Yeah.” Neil nodded then pointed to the semi-decimated blue one in Andrew’s hand. “That one’s a mermaid.” Then the green one. “Zombie.” Finally, a gray one with a red splotch that just looked like he’d forgotten to clean off the spatula before getting the new color. “Vampire.”

The most absurd impulse to laugh seized in Andrew’s chest and it took far more effort than he ever remembered needing before to swallow it back down. As a method to choke back the traitorous expression, Andrew took off the entire head of his cookie in one bite. It overfilled his mouth to the point where it was awkward to chew, but that discomfort was preferable to whatever sound might have escaped him if he’d allowed his embarrassing amusement with Neil’s… general _Neil-ness_ to show. 

Thankfully, neither Nicky nor Erik seemed to notice. There was a telling twitch at the corner of Neil’s mouth, but that was easy enough to ignore as he rocked back on the rear two legs of his chair and directed his attention to the more conventionally-decorated cookies on the table. 

Well, _mostly_ conventional.

On a cookie tray that had already been moved off to the counter, Andrew spotted a slash of offensively bright orange. When he stood up to go take a closer look he saw nine cookies decked out in orange and white icing with the Foxes numbers on them. Andrew rolled his eyes so hard his head hurt and turned away from the tray to see Neil looking at him. There was something bright and pleased about his expression even though the idiot wasn’t exactly smiling. He looked… _smug_.

Andrew met his gaze and took another large, deliberate bite of his cookie before turning to head back to the living room. He’d been in the middle of a marathon of Holiday Baking Championship and no one had yet to incorporate the right amount of bourbon in their recipes to appease Nancy.

*****

Two episodes and a series of moderately impressive yule logs later, the rustle of the lock at the front door had Andrew pausing his show again. By this point Neil had managed to make his escape from Nicky’s ‘Christmasland’ and had joined him on the couch. He shot Andrew a curious look and Andrew just shrugged in response as he pushed to his feet to head toward the door. Nicky and Erik were still in the kitchen making something else ‘festive’ but it wasn’t like it was a big house -- Nicky was going to hear Aaron and Katelyn come in and Andrew wanted to make sure he could get the food out of the way before that happened.

This proved to be a bout of very wise forethought, as the second Nicky came around the corner from the kitchen and spotted Katelyn and Aaron trudging in through the front door he screeched like a cracked up cat who’d just inhaled a full liter of helium and launched himself at the pair. 

Andrew avoided being caught up in the ensuing carnage of an embrace with a neat sidestep. It was entirely possible that the only thing that saved Aaron from being completely crushed was the fact that his backliner reflexes meant that when Nicky came at him he instinctively hunched his shoulders and brought the laundry basket full of gifts up toward his chest. Nicky was forced to curve around him to the side to get an arm around his shoulders, and so he didn’t end up smothering the smaller man.

Katelyn wasn’t so lucky, but she was wearing a puffy coat so that probably offered her a bit of cushion. Besides, she was inherently just… softer, and was able to absorb the impact better. 

“Oh my GOD! Oh my God. _Oh my God!!!_ ” Nicky squeezed the both of them tighter before stepping back and looking between them with wide eyes and an even wider grin. “Oh, my God!” he said again, as apparently surprise turned him into a skipping record. 

“Nah, I think it’s just Aaron and Katelyn,” Neil said from where he’d come up beside him. Andrew looked over to see that despite his partner’s dryly amused tone, his gaze was soft and his smile unrestrained. It was an expression that Andrew had seen on him before, but it was still rare -- especially around the others. 

Nicky pulled away from Katelyn and Aaron enough to look over at them and Andrew saw that the man was openly weeping. He instinctively took a step back just in case the food wasn’t shield enough to protect him from a hug, but Nicky just gave a watery chuckle. “This... is gonna be the best _fucking_ Christmas ever.” He gave a raspy chuckle, then turned back to Aaron and Katelyn to give them another round of hugs. Aaron managed to escape this time but Katelyn was apparently happy to indulge the emotional idiot. She laughed and maybe she cried a little bit too; Andrew wasn’t paying close enough attention to tell. 

He _was_ able to catch movement beside him in time to look over and see Neil sign a quick question to Katelyn. 

“How long did it take you to convince him to come?”

Katelyn included Andrew in the sly smirk she shot their way before holding up a finger to ask for them to wait a moment. Then she gave Nicky her full attention again, placing her hands on the excitable man’s shoulders. “Will you help Aaron with the presents? I _think_ we remembered to get everything into the basket but there still may be a few that toppled out in the car. We were just so excited to get here and I was carrying the food so I didn’t check the floor on the backseat. The basket fell over at one point and Aaron had to repack it right before we came inside.”

“Of course!” Nicky beamed at her then turned all five hundred watts onto Aaron. Andrew had to give his brother credit: the other Minyard didn’t even cringe. He just sighed and shrugged before kicking off his shoes so he could follow Nicky over to where the tree was set up. The seven-foot plastic pine replica was still completely naked, boxes of decorations neatly stacked off to the side. Nicky insisted that they decorate _together_ on Christmas Eve as a way to welcome the Spirit of Christmas into their home, or some kind of nonsense like that. 

As Nicky, Aaron, and Erik headed over toward the tree, Katelyn shrugged off her coat and smiled back over at them. 

“Actually,” she said in a low voice that _probably_ wouldn’t carry to the others, “it was Aaron’s idea.”

Neil paused in taking her coat, his eyebrows shooting up to kiss his hairline. 

Katelyn giggled. “What, is that so hard to believe?”

“Well… _yeah._ ” Neil shook himself out of his stupor and hung Katelyn’s coat on the hook Aaron’s usually occupied. “He’s kind of an asshole.”

“All of you are,” Katelyn rebuffed with an unbothered shrug. “Pretty sure it's a prerequisite to being a Fox. That doesn’t mean you guys don’t all care about each other. And it’s _Christmas_. Of course Aaron would want to share it with his family.” She carefully toed out of her shoes and stooped to move both them and Aaron’s over to the side where the rest of the shoes were piled. 

What Katelyn clearly still did not realize was that their ‘ _family_ ’ was more than just unconventional. Andrew and Aaron weren’t just repairing their relationship, they were building it up from the ground. Despite sharing blood, despite sharing a fucking _face_ , he and Aaron hadn’t started to be anything close to family until this past year. Just over a year, actually, if you counted the starting point as the moment that Aaron charged into that small room at the Hemmick residence and bludgeoned Drake Spear in the skull with a heavy-class exy racquet. A little less than one if you considered it as their first joint session with Bee. 

“You and I have different definitions of family,” Andrew commented dryly. After all, this girl didn’t come from a broken home full of fear and broken promises. She came from a place where the word ‘love’ was neither a threat whispered in the night nor a carrot luring him to a stick that would only beat him in the end. 

Katelyn paused, and Andrew could see the hesitation in her face. He could understand why. This time last year, Andrew probably would have put a knife to her throat for coming within ten feet of Aaron. He still would, if it turned out that she was going to hurt him or otherwise lead him astray. Since October, however, they’d… _bonded_ was too strong of a word for it, but they’d come to a certain understanding. The understanding that they were both going to be a part of Aaron’s life and they were going to need to learn to be around each other. For Andrew, that meant tolerating her presence and accepting that not only did he want Aaron safe, he wanted him _happy_ \-- and Katelyn was a part of that happiness. He wasn’t sure what Katelyn’s piece of it was, but he imagined it had something to do with learning how not to be so afraid of him. 

Which was a pity, really. Andrew much preferred when people were afraid of him. 

“I don’t know,” Katelyn said slowly, testing her words carefully. “I think, maybe, you just haven’t redefined it yet.”

“Redefined,” Andrew said. He didn’t make it a question. Beside him he felt Neil tense slightly, though he didn’t look over to see whatever expression might be on his face. No, he kept his focus honed on Katelyn, unwavering. If she was going to attempt this kind of conversation with him, Andrew was curious to see how far she would take it. How much spine was she really willing to show, he wondered. 

Katelyn licked her lips and hesitated, but instead of backing down, instead of shrugging or smiling and trying to pass it off, instead of making excuses and escaping to the protective circle of Aaron’s affection and Nicky’s attention, she squared her shoulders and met his eyes. He was reminded of their conversation back in October, then, after her assault. He was reminded of the woman who met his eyes and told him she was scared, but that she was going to move forward anyway. 

Good. He had thought she might be interesting and he hated being wrong almost as much as he hated being right. 

“Yes,” she said. “I think… you have this concept of ‘family’ being the people who are _supposed_ to love you, as opposed to the ones who actually do. For most people that’s… it’s a thinner line. For most people, the ones who are supposed to love us _are_ the ones that do, and they show it in ways we can understand. And you’ve also rewritten the definition to be something like… ‘the people who are supposed to love you but who will always hurt you instead’. And maybe that stopped you from being able to get closer to Aaron, and to Nicky, even though they both do love you, have always loved you.”

Andrew’s impulse was to remind her that she had no fucking _clue_ what the real world was like and that she had zero standing to inform him about _anything_ in his own life. He held his tongue for a long moment, though, and stared her down instead. 

He waited for her to back down, take back her words, or maybe just run away. When none of that happened, he forced his shoulders to rise and fall in the facsimile of an unbothered shrug. 

Then he said, as if he did not care one way or the other, “Maybe.”

He did not wait around to see the light click on in her eyes. Nor did he look at Neil to see _his_ reaction to the word and the implied concession that went along with it. 

Instead, he turned to bring their lunch into the kitchen so that he, at least, could eat in peace. 

It only took about a minute for Neil to follow him. Because of course Neil followed him. Andrew didn’t bother to pay him any attention as he finished moving around all of Nicky’s baking and decorating crap to make some space at the table. However, he did clear enough of the table for the both of them to sit. He did grab two glasses from the cabinet and filled one with ice water for Neil. He did pluck two paper plates off the pile and dropped one before Neil’s usual seat at the table. 

The entire time, Neil said nothing. He helped clear the table without a word, and then while Andrew was getting their drinks he dug through the bags for their usual order. It was only after Andrew had dropped into his seat that Neil swivelled on his own to face him. 

“Hey, Andrew?” 

Andrew debated ignoring him. He was willing to tolerate Neil beside him now, willing to eat with him and accept that, alright, maybe his presence was a _comforting_ thing, even when he was unsettled. Maybe it was a good thing to be known and understood without having to say anything. But that didn’t mean he had to be willing to _acknowledge_ it. 

Except…

Except after a long moment without acknowledgement, Neil turned away without judgement or a huff. Unbothered and accepting that Andrew wasn’t going to talk to him, Neil had just turned to his meal without another word. There was no tension in the air, no disappointment and no burden of concern, just an acceptance that now wasn’t going to be a time that Andrew responded to him and… and that was that. Even with the growth in their relationship, even with them leaning on each other more and more, Neil still trusted that the person who knew Andrew best… was _Andrew_ \-- and if he didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to engage, didn’t want to _interact_ , he was going to respect it without any added pressure. 

Something warm and fluttering with life rustled in Andrew’s chest. He looked over at Neil and something about the relaxed set of his shoulders and the easy way he propped his elbows on the table with perfect ease had that _something_ sigh with contentment from the place it had nestled right between his ribs. Like he could sense his stare, Neil looked over at him and tilted his head. Whatever he saw made Neil smile. It was a small thing, of course. Neil had a thousand and one smiles and nine hundred and ninety-nine of them were small things. They were small, precious variations on the slightest twist of his lips and the spark of his eyes. It was the difference between the brush of lashes against his cheek and the crinkle at the corner of his eyes. It was noticing if the shadow of a dimple showed on one side or if the glint of an eyetooth flashed to signal the slightest smirk. 

Andrew knew this, because he knew all of Neil’s smiles. He knew all of them, and yet… he was still finding more. He was still… he was still learning how to _decipher_ them. How to suss out the finer, deeper details of each expression. 

Like now, now Andrew was seeing an expression he had seen before. A soft, calm, steady expression filled with promises and understanding. There’d been a time where all he’d seen in that look was a kind of comfort he hadn’t been ready for. Then he learned to identify the affection hidden in the sweetness on his lips. 

Now? Now he also could see the pride. 

It pissed him off and made him warm at the same time. It was still an alien thing for him to accept, too foreign and too familiar, too genuine and too deeply rooted in truth. Because Neil didn’t indulge in false pride. _Neil_ did not waste such sentiments on minor accomplishments. Neil couldn’t be bothered for anything he didn’t personally care about. 

Andrew just happened to be something, _someone_ , that Neil cared about a great deal. 

Andrew had to swallow around a tightness in his throat and he narrowed his eyes at his partner in accusation. 

“What?” he hissed, but even he could hear that there was no heat to the syllable. 

Neil knew better than to verbalize the intentions behind his eyes. Or maybe he just knew he didn’t have to. Instead, he gave a small shrug and said simply, “I want to kiss you. Yes, or no?”

If Andrew told him ‘no’, Neil would accept it. He wouldn’t take it personally, wouldn’t feel cheated like he’d been denied something he was owed. That still stunned Andrew, still blew him away even after all these months of trading ‘yes’s and ‘no’s and kisses and truths. On top of that, he _trusted_ Andrew to be honest with him, and to accept his honesty in turn. Which was why Neil still asked his question when Andrew had asked him what he was on about. Instead of saying it was nothing, instead of passing it off and assuming he knew what Andrew was feeling and what Andrew needed, he just… he answered honestly and he… he just _asked_.

And that was why.

That was why there was absolutely no hesitation when Andrew said, “Yes.” He sighed, a little annoyed and a little exasperated -- because he was always at least a _little_ annoyed and exasperated with his idiotic little rabbit -- but his answer was the truth and he could tell that Neil knew it by the was his lips turned up in a deeper, sweeter version of _that look_.

Then Neil leaned over and kissed him. It was a soft kiss, almost casual, the barest brush of their mouths that still managed to leave Andrew’s lips tingling like he’d just been kissed by a livewire. Without meaning to, Andrew chased that brush of electric affection. He leaned forward as Neil pulled back and tasted his smile like he would a spoonful of the most decadent ice cream. When Neil sighed and leaned into this kiss, Andrew lifted a hand to cup his cheek, needing to touch him, wanting to read the curl of his lip and the divot of his smile like braille against his fingertips.

It was a slow kiss, a deliberate one - both of them saying more in the press of lips and the tangle of sighs than a hundred thousand words could ever _dream_ of expressing. 

Andrew would have been more than happy to kiss him again, but the scuffle of feet in the hall and the indistinguishable jumble of conversation drawing near reminded him of the other people in the house. With a reluctant sigh, he allowed the kiss to drift and end. He dropped his hand, pulled away, and enjoyed three long seconds of the dazed look on Neil’s face before that conversation broke through the haze and their peace was decidedly intruded upon. 

As Neil blinked out of his kiss-induced stupid, Andrew turned and raised a brow at the others as they entered the kitchen. 

“Aww, you guys started without us! Not fair!” Nicky’s whine was somewhat ruined by the grin he was still sporting, apparently still high on the surprise of Aaron’s arrival. 

Andrew met his gaze and just took one large deliberate bite of his taco. 

Nicky laughed as he stepped up to the table and began digging around in the bags. “Oh! Here we go. Aaron, I’ve got yours!” With extra pomp and circumstance, Nicky loaded up a paper plate with Aaron’s usual, plus an extra handful of hot-sauce packets, and presented it to him like a scepter to a king. 

“Congratulations,” Neil told Aaron with a smirk as he accepted the plate. “You have just become Nicky’s favorite cousin. How does it feel?”

Aaron rolled his eyes and just flipped him off instead of actually answering. 

“Hey, just remember you only have yourself to blame for becoming this year’s Christmas Angel.” Neil shrugged, unwrapping himself another taco. 

“A Christmas Angel!” Nicky said with a grin. “Oh, I like that.”

“Ugh, no,” Aaron complained. Katelyn laughed and patted him consolingly on the shoulder as they both took their seats while Erik cleared away the rest of the decorating supplies from the table so he and Nicky could also sit down. 

Neil, Nicky, and even Katelyn spent the next twenty minutes or so lightly antagonizing Aaron while Andrew ate in silence and just watched. Erik attempted to navigate the conversation the best he could as he learned the dynamics of the group -- the German man oscillating between chuckling at the others’ antics and gently defending Aaron, to which _Aaron_ was never sure how to respond. It was… it was interesting, and it… it wasn’t bad, this feeling. This atmosphere. It was different than when they hung out back at the dorms, maybe because of the addition of Erik or the mixing of company between Nicky and also Aaron and Katelyn. 

Andrew wasn’t sentimental enough to attribute it to holiday festivity or the ‘spirit of the season’ or whatever, but the mix wasn’t uninteresting and it… well, if this was what the holidays were going to look like going forward, maybe that wasn’t so terrible a thing.


	6. gifts i can give you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> St. Nicky works a little bit of magic. Neil talks about Christmases of the past and presents of many kinds are given.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this is hitting _after_ Christmas ^^; I’m so sorry. Especially since I’ve been so slow with chapters lately I really wanted to get this one out by the holiday and… well, failed XD But I hope it still brings with it all the right feels. 
> 
> I also wanna take a moment to just thank everyone who keeps reading. You all are phenomenal. Every keysmash or heart emoji or legit _paragraph_ y’all leave me in the comments is so incredibly dear to me. You’ve been so supportive in a time where I’ve been going through a lot of different stressors. x.x I won’t get into those here, but I DO want you to know that all your comments and support and kudos left and reblogs and all that -- it really does mean a lot to me. I’ve been able to make friends and talk about fandom again and it’s been SO GOOD.
> 
> So, to you <3 To all of you <3 Thank you and I love you ^_^
> 
> ((I was so fucking excited to get this chapter done that I am posting it with only a VERY GLANCING edit-read, so please be forgiving XD I'll probably go back through in the next week or so to clean it up but nothing will actually change.))
> 
> Warning: Mentions of and allusions to canon-typical child abuse.

When Andrew opened his eyes it was to the thin, milky light of morning seeping through the slatted blinds. It filled the room like a mist made of angel sighs, so pure it gave the illusion of opacity. Andrew closed his eyes and frowned, trying to figure out why the fuck early mornings were haunting him even when he was on goddamn fucking winter vacation. The whole point of vacation was supposed to be not having to wake up at the crack of dawn for fucking stickball. He was free of the damn sport, but it didn't seem fair that he was still waking up so early. Stupid internal clock with its stupid cycles and patterns and shit.

Unintelligible grumbles made their way into the pillow as he smothered himself in reprimand. He rolled more fully onto his stomach and buried his face deeper into the pillow, then hid under it with a sigh, willing himself to go back to sleep. The house was completely silent around him in an almost unnatural hush, even the usual creaks and sighs of the house's older bones absent in the still winter morning. Theoretically, this utter quiet should be the perfect environment for Andrew to be able to lull himself back into blissful unconsciousness. 

Instead it only made him feel restless. 

With an annoyed sigh, Andrew freed himself from his pillow and sat up. Neil stirred slightly beside him, his brow furrowing as he sensed a disturbance. Andrew froze, pressing his lips together and breathing in as slowly as possible through his nose until Neil relaxed again. Both of them were light sleepers, but just because Andrew was up at the crack of fucking dawn again didn’t mean Neil should have to lose out on his sleep as well. 

It took some very precise maneuvering for Andrew was able to ease himself off the bed without waking Neil. He held his breath and moved as slowly as possible, pausing each time Neil stirred or took a breath that sounded too close to consciousness. If he was feeling more generous about being awake this fucking early in the morning, Andrew might have been amused with himself. He felt like some sort of cat burglar, attempting to sneak through a laser grid and past security cameras in order to abscond with a priceless piece of artwork. As it were, he was just really fucking annoyed. 

He had to bite back a couple of choice words about the sharp chill that hit his skin once he was away from the warmth of the bed. The house was old and hadn’t gotten a ton of upkeep in the years Nicky had owned it, so winter usually brought a strong draft. They lived in South Carolina, so it wasn’t like the cold was _lethal_ , but it wasn’t exactly pleasant either. 

Instead of risking waking Neil with the sounds of him shuffling around getting dressed, Andrew just grabbed the nearest sweatshirt and a thicker pair of sweats from the floor where he or Neil had discarded them on their way into bed last night. He could steal Aaron’s slippers - sorry, _house shoes_ \- from the living room where he’d left them last night before he and Katelyn had gone to bed. Nicky always had a set laying around wherever they shouldn’t be, as well, but those would be both far too big and of questionable cleanliness. Since Andrew wasn’t wearing socks he preferred not to take his chances by putting his bare skin on something Nicky’s feet had been sweating in for the past three and a half years. Aaron, on the other hand, would probably wear socks in the shower if he could get away with it. 

Andrew detoured to the bathroom to rinse the sleep out of his mouth and put on the warmer sweats. He tugged on the sweatshirt with a yawn and then shuffled out toward the living room. It was as he looked around for his brother’s slippers that he noticed the change in the room. 

Anyone else probably wouldn’t have noticed, at least not at a glance, but Andrew wasn’t most people. Even half asleep and irritated, Andrew couldn’t help but sense a difference in his surroundings. A learned instinct had him glancing toward the windows and door, making sure they were all secure, then a quick scan of the rest of the room confirmed that he was still alone. Neil could be creepily quiet sometimes, and Andrew wouldn’t put it past him to silently follow him out of bed even at this stupid early hour. 

Only once he had confirmed he was safe and alone did Andrew take a closer look and realize that the _change_ had to do with the tree. Yesterday afternoon after Katelyn and Aaron had arrived and they’d finished their lunch, the lot of them had spent time decorating it. They’d even gone out and each picked out a new ornament to add. It was ridiculous, but indulging Nicky once a year wasn’t exactly the worst crime a man could commit. When they had all gone to bed last night, the tree had been glowing softly with multicolored lights, surrounded by a modest collection of gifts for those who were here - plus any others for Kevin, Wymack, and Abby since Kevin would be coming by before New Years and they would pass along those then. 

The lights were still on, the whisper-thin dawn barely dimming their glow, but under and around the tree were probably _three times_ the amount of presents. 

Andrew blinked, confused and a bit disconcerted because what the fuck?

Slowly, carefully, he crept to the tree and crouched down to examine one of the new additions. It was wrapped in completely different wrapping paper than what any of the rest of them had used - though not all of the new additions used the same paper. This one was a medium-sized box wrapped in gold foil with a bright red bow. The tag, which was an actual _tag_ \- not a sticker, read:

_To: Andrew  
From: Santa_

Though he had apparently tried to disguise his handwriting, the faux-elegant scrawl was distinctively Nicky’s. He always did have trouble with the uppercase cursive ‘a’.

Looking around, Andrew saw that all of the extra presents were ‘from Santa’, addressed to each of the people in the house, plus Kevin, several times over. Gifts for the family, then. Not only that, but there was a cluster of three gifts in bright blue snowflake paper that were addressed to the lot of them by couple. 

Andrew sighed. “Couple gifts, Nicky - really?” he murmured to himself -- and because he was assuredly alone, he allowed the tiniest amount of exasperated affection to seep in. He shook his head and stood up, ignoring the quiet swell of warmth occupying the center of his chest. Before it could become any more solid than a feathery glow, Andrew turned away from the tree and all of the presents scattered around it. 

It was too early to be sentimental; he at least deserved a cup of coffee first.

With that thought in mind, Andrew found Aaron’s slippers (one was under the coffee table and the other wedged between the couch cushions?) and headed for the kitchen. He had to blink at the festive assault that met him, because apparently the added presents under the tree hadn’t been the only thing St. Nicky had been up to last night after they’d all gone to bed. 

At some point during lunch yesterday, after he’d been dubbed the Christmas Angel, Aaron had commented that it looked like Santa had thrown up in there - because of all the Christmas decorations neither Andrew nor Neil had bothered trying to curb Nicky on scattering about. This had set off a volley of descriptors between the lot of them. One of Andrew’s favorites was ‘Christmapocalypse’, contributed - surprisingly enough - by Katelyn. 

(She and Neil had then instantly started trying to come up with a sign for it and the options had been… creative.)

Maybe Nicky had taken this to be a challenge when he definitely shouldn’t have -- because now, in addition to the streamers and the strings of lights that were honestly probably a fire hazard, there were glitter-bombed snowflakes hanging from the ceiling at different levels. They spun lazily in the air, reflecting the light coming in through the window to make tiny rainbows bounce off the walls and - most unfortunately - Andrew’s eyeballs. 

The table was now set with a tablecloth that Andrew was pretty sure used to be one of those rugs you wind round the bottom of a Christmas tree. The white of a second tablecloth underneath was visible through the hole in the middle and Nicky had filled the space with a hodgepodge of ornaments and figurines to create an entire Christmas scene. 

Tiny snowmen and at least four different versions of Santa loitered around the space, arranged to make it look like they were giving each other gifts (most of which were trimmed from little plastic tree decorations that literally had two miniature gift boxes on sticks that you were supposed to wedge among the branches). Nicky had used strings of silver beads to thread through the whole display, and what looked like decimated cotton balls were arranged in what Andrew supposed was meant to be snow. There were little tealights in snowflake candle jars and sprigs of pine artfully arranged around the table leaving very little room for anyone to be able to sit and eat at it. In the very center was the gingerbread house that Nicky, Aaron, Katelyn, and Neil had built yesterday.

(Well, Nicky and Katelyn had built it. _Neil_ had spent most of the time throwing candy at Aaron when he wasn’t looking and _Aaron_ had spent the time that he wasn’t hurling insults at Neil looking up different gingerbread houses on his phone to give Nicky and Katelyn ideas. It had been a mess.)

Andrew sighed again - a holiday trend at this point - and rubbed his hands over his face. He turned away from the table and resolutely pressed the power button on the coffee machine. Too early. It was too early for this shit. 

Since it would take a little while for the coffee to brew, and by starting the damn thing he was committing to staying awake, Andrew paced back into the living room to grab his coat. He had to pilfer the lighter from Neil’s pockets again, then he trundled back through the kitchen to pass through the mud room and go out the side door for a smoke. 

Outside was bathed in the soft light and silence. The same silence that had rattled Andrew in the bedroom cushioned him now, less oppressive in the open air where it could spread out with plenty of room to breathe. Andrew leaned his forearms on the railing and let himself be content. There was no snow on the ground, but the light sheen of frost on the curled, winter-dead grass suggested it was cold enough to support it if the sky decided to open up later on. A glance up revealed a powder-gray sky, unhurried but full of promise for the mythical South Carolina White Christmas. Andrew didn’t really care if it snowed or not, he was just glad he had enough smokes for the rest of the week so he wouldn’t have to drive on the same roads as jackasses who didn’t understand the relationship between the weather and driving conditions. 

Andrew finished off his cigarette and since it _was_ fucking cold enough for snow and he was settled enough not to feel the immediate need for a second stick, he just shoved his hands back into his coat and want back inside, shutting and locking the door behind him. The nicotine helped wake him up a bit more, and maybe it burned away the last of his irritability as well because as the coffee finished brewing he started getting out fixings for breakfast. 

Nicky and Erik had gone out shopping earlier in the week and had stocked the fridge with enough food for a damn month, all of which they apparently intended for them to eat _today_ \- though no actual discussion on who was cooking and what the dishes were going to be had ever occurred. Not to Andrew’s knowledge anyway. If Nicky and Erik were planning on feeding them all day he really hoped that Erik was going to be doing most of the cooking. Erik had proved to be a very good cook over the last ten days or so that he’d been with them in Columbia, and it wasn’t that Nicky was a bad cook, he just… didn’t really understand how flavor worked. 

Andrew turned on the oven so it could heat up. He’d fry up half of the bacon and bake the rest of it. He could also use the oven for the breakfast potatoes. If he got clever with the eggs, he might even be able to trick Neil into eating some vegetables…

The smell of bacon was already filling the kitchen when Andrew sensed Neil watching him from the overly-decorated doorway. He knew it was Neil without having to look over in that direction, could feel the weight of that stare even in the dark with his eyes closed. If Andrew was a superstitious man he might be concerned or even curious about that feeling - that _knowing_ \- or, alternatively, the sheer physicality of Neil’s too-soft gaze. But whether the power was his or Neil’s didn’t matter because Andrew didn’t believe in nonsense. Andrew believed in what he could touch and hold and hurt and know. He believed in what was true. He believed in what was real. 

Now, with Neil watching him, he could feel that familiar stare settle over him like a warm blanket, sheltering and knowing but somehow not suffocating. It was early, and so Andrew let himself be irritated at how fond he was of that stupid fucking stare. In retaliation, he pointedly ignored him. 

A soft hum, barely more than a hush of breath, slipped between the sizzle of the bacon. Andrew didn’t need to look at Neil to know what expression he was wearing now. He could feel the slight upturn of his mouth like a whisper just far enough from his ear that he couldn’t quite decipher the words, even though the tone came across clear. 

Neil knew full well that Andrew had noticed him, and was amused that he was being ignored. 

Tempting as it was to react to the insult of that amusement, Andrew continued to focus on making breakfast as if Neil wasn’t there at all. The annoying thing about Neil, though, was that - unlike Andrew - he had no problem with being ignored. If someone didn’t want to give him attention, he accepted it and moved on unless the whole point was to annoy the shit out of them and that was the best way to do it. When it came to the game of being a fucking menace, Neil Josten would always win. When it wasn’t being used against him (and sometimes even when it was), Andrew found that particular trait woefully attractive. Well, unless Neil was using it to get himself fucking killed. Then it only made Andrew want to hurl him through several layers of drywall.

By the time Andrew’s phone buzzed in an alert to remind Andrew to check the bacon inside the oven, Neil had apparently looked his fill and was pushing away from the doorframe to cross fully into the kitchen. The _only_ reason Andrew finally glanced over at him was to make sure he was not in the way as he opened the oven to check the bacon. He would hate to have gone through all the trouble only to end up with bacon on the floor.

Neil did not notice, as he was heading directly for the pantry - and when Andrew was finished ascertaining that the bacon needed at least a few more minutes he saw the reason. Neil turned around with the waffle iron cradled awkwardly in his arms like a giant metal baby. The thing was ancient and _enormous_ \- big enough to make four full-sized waffles all at once. Nicky had picked it up at a garage sale during that first summer they were living in the house and had burnt many a waffle in its crevices. It had sat forgotten in the pantry for over two years before Neil discovered it early on in the semester. 

Much as Andrew hated to admit it since it would only make him ever more smug about it - Neil was getting pretty damn good at waffles. 

The thing clanked against the counter as Neil unloaded it, then got it plugged in so it could heat up. Andrew turned back to his own tasks without bothering to break their easy silence. There wasn’t much trouble that Neil could get into while he was making waffles, after all. 

A moment later, a quiet dance of bells filled the kitchen - not loud enough to drift beyond the confines of their little breakfast-making bubble but enough to surround them. When Andrew looked over at Neil he found the menace watching him again, this time with a brighter, mischievous grin. The music played on and Neil’s lips moved silently to them, _Outside the snow is falling and friends are calling yoo-hoo…_ He lifted a hand in a playful wave. 

Andrew rolled his eyes, but… did not bother to stop the small smile that etched its way into the corner of his mouth. The star-bright blue of Neil’s eyes sparked in triumph as he got what he wanted. His hips swayed to the music as he turned back to gathering what he needed for waffles and Andrew tried his best not to be charmed.

This was his life now, Andrew realized suddenly. This, right here, moments like _this_ happened in _his_ life. Andrew honestly couldn’t say whether he was more exasperated or surprised at that particular revelation, but there was something soft and glowy in the middle of his chest as he thought it. 

Upstairs and down the hall, Andrew could hear the movings-about of the other bodies in the house, undoubtedly drawn from their beds by the smell of breakfast. Andrew turned his full focus back to the stove and added a few more pieces of bacon to the skillet. He had never really cared one way or another about Christmas before, and that hadn’t changed - but he did allow himself to be pleased with where he was at. If anything, the day was sure to be entertaining.

*****

Breakfast was loud and messy and Andrew was pretty sure that at least half as much food ended up on the floor as did actually being eaten, thanks to Neil being a little shit and Aaron being too slow to get his coffee from the first pot. At least Andrew wouldn’t have to be the person who cleaned it up; since he and Neil had done the cooking - Nicky had volunteered himself and Aaron to clean up breakfast. Aaron might have started to grumble at this, but Nicky’s reminder that Katelyn was making them lunch and Erik “had already designed the most bountiful and _Christmagiacl_ dinner ever, Aaron Michael, so don’t you dare!” - had put him quickly back in his place.

While his brother and cousin took care of that mess, Andrew had another cigarette out on the side porch. This time, Neil joined him and after they finished their smokes Andrew dragged him closer and kissed him until they were both a little breathless and the touch of pink at Neil’s throat _definitely_ was not because of the cold. 

They must have taken more time out on the porch than Andrew had realized, because by the time they returned to the house through the mudroom Aaron and Nicky were almost done cleaning up from breakfast. Nicky beamed over at them as Andrew relocked the door. 

“Oh good, you’re just in time!”

Andrew gave him a blank stare. Beside him, Neil cocked his head and said, “In time for…?”

“Presents!”

Ah, well, that was probably why Nicky was downright _vibrating_ with excitement. Before Neil could say something inflammatory that would be both hilarious and borderline cruel, Andrew plucked at his partner’s sleeve and tugged him toward the living room. “We will save you a seat,” he promised to Nicky - not because it needed to be said, but because if he didn’t want Neil to have a chance to fill the silence with more of his shit. There was a particular gleam in his eye that told Andrew that his partner had woken up feeling way too playful for anyone else’s good. 

The look Neil gave him as Andrew shepherded him into the living room told him that the professional fucking menace knew exactly what he was doing. That smirk was _distinctly_ smug, and Andrew wanted to kiss it away until Neil’s mouth was too sore to hold any expression whatsoever. 

He contained himself and, instead, placed one hand flat on Neil’s chest once they got into the living room and gave a firm shove to make him flop down onto the couch. He pinned the perpetual nuisance with a glare, then perched on the arm rest himself to wait, choosing to pretend the huff that escaped his partner was out of the annoyance of being thwarted rather than the amusement it probably was.

Nicky came bounding into the living room only a couple of minutes later, trailed much more passively by Aaron. 

“I think Nicky should get to pass out the presents,” said Katelyn from where she was seated on the floor in front of the couch. 

“I agree!” agreed Nicky and no one else. Aaron, who was sliding into position behind Katelyn, looked over and Andrew shared a commiserating look with his brother. With the exception of last year, each Christmas they’d spent in this house had turned out the same way - with Nicky valiantly trying to imbue them with the Christmas spirit and failing more and more epically each year. Andrew didn’t know how last year’s Christmas went, but Nicky seemed like he was trying to make up for it in excess this year, what with the ridiculous amount of decorations and the extra “Santa” gifts. At this point, he wouldn’t be surprised if Nicky even --

Nicky had hurried toward the tree upon his enthusiastic agreement, and Andrew had _thought_ he had ducked down to fuss with the presents, but as the older man popped back up and spun around to face them he realized he was wrong. 

Because there was Nicky, in reindeer pajamas with his hands on his hips, wearing a Santa hat and a _ridiculous_ fake white beard. 

Katelyn clapped her hands over her mouth on a laugh and Erik looked appropriately torn between abject adoration and _exasperation_. Beside him, Neil coughed in a way that Andrew recognized as the junkie’s less-than-subtle cover for a laugh. Aaron only sighed - the expression coming at the exact same time as Andrew’s own, causing the twins to look at each other. Andrew narrowed his eyes and Aaron snorted before pointedly returning his gaze to --

“Call me Saint Nicky!!”

“Jesus Christ,” Aaron muttered.

“Close enough!” Nicky beamed and gave a wink. “And for the Christmas Angel himself, the first gift! This one is from Saaaaantaaaaaa!” he half sang. 

Aaron attempted to look particularly put-upon, but he did a pretty shit job of it with how quickly he leaned forward to snatch up the present being pushed his way. 

Though Nicky interspersed ‘Santa’ gifts with ones from each other, a trend very quickly became evident regarding those extra presents. Namely, that they were _suspiciously_ high dollar items. A new laptop for Aaron, new phones for Neil and Andrew that were newer, higher-quality models with much more memory than their current phones. Katelyn got a brand new tablet pre-installed with some kind of digital art software, and Nicky and Erik got smart watches. New tech wasn’t ‘Santa’s only theme, though. He also got each of them a brand new head-to-toe outfit, complete with shoes and personalized accessories (a necklace for Katelyn, matching cigarette cases for Neil and Andrew, a set of bracelets for Nicky, and pocket watches for Aaron and Erik). 

Aaron got the honors as Christmas Angel to open a larger gift tagged as ‘ _To: The Fam - From: Santa_ ’ that turned out to be a brand new game system and four games to go with it, all of which had been released just in time for the holiday season. 

After he finished losing his damn mind over it, Aaron turned wide eyes to Nicky and demanded, “How?”

Nicky blinked innocently at him. “How should I know what Santa gets up to?” he returned innocently.

Aaron shook his head and looked around the room, then at the tree still with presents beneath - some from them and some from ‘Santa’. “No. No way. Nicky, did you rob a bank? Sell a kidney? This has got to be like, thousands of dollars here. There is no fucking way that you saved up from your stipend. How much trouble are we in if the cops catch on?” The worry of his words was counteracted by the possessive way his hands curled around that game system, though, and Andrew had to suppress an amused snort. 

But… though he hated to admit it - his brother did have a point. 

Nicky floundered and blushed. “Ah, okay, so maybe Santa had an… anonymous donation? Look, I promise it’s totally legit! You don’t have to worry!”

“An anonymous donation?” Aaron asked with a dryness Andrew had to appreciate. 

“Uhh…” Nicky’s eyes flicked to Erik and then away again. “Yeah!”

As one, everyone turned to look at Erik. Well, _almost_ everyone. Neil was fiddling with the ears on one of the fox-shaped slippers he’d gotten from Katelyn, pointedly not looking at anyone. Andrew turned his head to study him, eyes narrowing - and it clicked the second before Erik said - with genuine confusion, “Huh? What, no - it wasn’t me.”

Nicky laughed and reached over, patting his arm. “Sure, sure, it was _Santa_. Of course, baby.”

“Ah, no. Sorry love. If I had the means for this generosity, I would probably be using it to fly to America every weekend to see you.”

“Aww, baby I love you too -- wait. So, you _really_ didn’t leave a wad of cash under my pillow with a note that said ‘ _for Christmas, make it good_ ’?”

Neil’s fiddling became more intense. Well, now Andrew knew why Neil had been in such a chipper mood this morning. Though he still didn’t know Neil’s _reasons_. As far as he knew, Neil cared as little about Christmas as he did, if not even less. Well, no time like now to find out.

“Got something to share with the class, Neil?” Andrew asked lightly, raising his voice just enough to be heard over the murmuring from the rest of the group. 

Everyone’s eyes _instantly_ snapped to Neil, who wasn’t looking at any of them and instead had leveled his best glare on Andrew. Andrew just stared back, impassive and unmoved. Neil should know better - the only effect Neil’s glares ever had on Andrew was an increased desire to kiss him stupid, and that wasn’t going to save him from this particular situation. 

“Neil?” Nicky’s voice. When both Andrew and Neil turned to look at him, Nicky was looking their way with wide eyes that looked conspicuously wet. “Neil did you really…? I mean…”

Neil gave an awkward, uncomfortable shrug - which was as much of a confirmation as the words that followed. “I hated Christmas as a kid, and then just… stopped caring about it when we were running, since we never did anything for it. Last year I was at Evermore…”

The room held its breath. Neil was not exactly a man who shared intimate details about his past, not freely like this. Not when it did not benefit him in some way. Their truth game, or as reparation for his lies to the Foxes, sure - those were instances of purpose. But there was no weight on Neil now. He could have easily just said he’d had the cash and thought it would be fun to let Nicky go wild and that would have been accepted by most of the room. 

Instead, Neil said, “This is the first Christmas that I’ve had a family, and it felt like that should mean something. But I’m not good with presents. Nicky is, and he loves it too so… It really isn’t a big deal.”

Neil had gotten each of them a three-month subscription box of varying themes (except for Andrew himself, who had gotten a _twelve_ month subscription to Book of the Month), so Andrew didn’t think the junkie was quite as terrible at gifting as he seemed to think he was. Still, he understood why Neil would have wanted the anonymity - and why he’d chosen Nicky as his proxy. Even though Neil hadn’t been terrible on his own, he didn’t really have an _imagination_ and giving Nicky the finances to actually get everyone the gifts he could come up with was probably the smartest thing a man with several thousand dollars and a wish to… to _dote_ on his family could do. 

Which, Andrew realized, is exactly what Neil had wanted to do. He had wanted to dote on them, he just hadn’t known how. 

A strangled sound from Nicky had Andrew tearing his eyes away from Neil in time to see his cousin scramble up to his knees and lunge forward. “Oh, kiddo!”

Neil grimaced, but accepted the hug he got. When Nicky hung on a bit too tightly for a bit too long, Andrew gave him a jab in the shoulder and the sentimental idiot backed off with a sniff and a watery grin, wiping at his eyes with the heel of his hand. 

“Best. Christmas. Ever,” Nicky declared as he backed up to the tree and reclaimed his spot. 

“Why did you hate Christmas as a child?” Erik asked curiously, then.

“Uh, because his dad was a crazy fucking psycho serial killer?” Aaron shot back with an incredulous look, earning him a hissed ‘ _Aaron!_ ’ and a slap to the leg from Katelyn.

“What?” Aaron protested with a frown. “It’s true, and Erik knows that. It was a stupid fucking question.”

Andrew agreed and shot Erik a dark look. The German had the grace to look embarrassed, but Neil waved him off when he opened his mouth to apologize. 

“Ah, no. It’s okay.” Neil shrugged, rubbing his thumb over the scars on his knuckles. Andrew watched him pull at his hands and pick at his scars for a minute before reaching over and covering his hands with his own. When Neil looked up at him, Andrew gave a squeeze and let his eyes ask the question. Neil nodded, and Andrew pulled one of those hands up and into his own lap, keeping it occupied as Neil returned his attention to Erik and the room at large. Andrew pointedly ignored the way Nicky was looking from their hands to Andrew’s face, to Neil’s, and back again in the golden triangle of barely restrained _squee_ (he really had no other word for it, okay?). 

Neil was quiet for a moment as he decided if and how he wanted the conversation to continue, and no one broke the silence to make the decision for him - which Andrew both resented and appreciated. 

Finally, Neil took a breath and squeezed his hand. Andrew squeezed back and Neil said, “My dad always threw these big parties for Christmas and New Years. It wasn’t exactly a place for kids, but me and Mom would have to be there, y’know? If I wasn’t getting in trouble for getting underfoot, I was getting in trouble for not seeming like a normal enough kid to his business associates. There was just no winning.” Neil let out a tight, bitter laugh. His free hand rose and scratched lightly, absently at his throat; Andrew tracked the movement but did not interrupt. 

“I remember, our first Christmas on the run, I remember thinking ‘oh thank fuck’ - because even if Dad found us, he’d kill us but I’d never have to go through one of those parties again. Always having to pretend to be happy, but not too much. Having to be ‘normal’, whatever the fuck that meant - but also stay out of the way. The last Christmas we had there, right before I turned ten, I remember this woman asking me if I had written a letter to Santa. She said it like it was something all kids did, so I lied and told her yes - of course it did. Then she asked me what I’d asked for and I just… blanked. I panicked, and ended up backing into a table and knocking something over. Don’t even remember what it was, just that it made a mess and Dad…”

Neil’s hand drifted to his chest, where Andrew knew there was a rough, round-ish scar just over his breastbone, overlaid with several diagonal scars. The placement was too central and the combination too deliberate - Andrew had always known those ones had been given to cause pain, not as the result of a fight. 

A cold-burning fire hissed and crackled in Andrew’s own chest, one that took more effort to temper than he would have liked to admit. Neil’s father was dead, but Andrew wanted to kill him all over again. For the wound to be so precise and _clean_ , it meant that Neil would have had to have been tied down - because his instinct would have been to thrash and try to get away, and Andrew very well knew that as a fucking _nine-year-old kid_ the fear and pain would have made him move even if his logical mind knew that doing so would only make it worse. When you were that young, you just didn’t have the discipline over your reflexive motor control - not when panic was a factor. 

Or at least, Andrew hadn’t - not at nine.

No one was stupid or callous enough to ask what Neil’s bastard father had done to him as punishment. Maybe if they had been with the rest of the Foxes, someone would have - but everyone in this room was either too soft or too aware to make that mistake and Andrew was grateful for it. Instead, Nicky took a deep, shuddering breath and turned back to the tree, digging around until he found the package he wanted before crawling forward and pushing it into Neil’s lap. 

“Here,” he said, “this one is from me. I think you could use it now.” When Neil blinked down at the brightly wrapped gift like he didn’t know what to do with it, Nicky made a small, worried noise. “Neil..?”

He reached out a hand but froze when Andrew said, “Don’t.” Andrew ignored the questioning look his cousin gave him and kept his focus on Neil. It did not surprise him that Neil was ‘having a moment’ - as his partner had taken to calling the dissociative episodes that sometimes happened on bad days or days where he and Bee had discussed something difficult. Honestly, given where Neil had been exactly one year ago, Andrew had rather been expecting to see more of them. There was a reason he’d removed their old high school exy racquets from the coat closet and stuck them out in the shed - and it wasn’t to stymie his own trauma. 

Slowly, Andrew took the hand he was already holding and placed it on the present. He unfurled Neil’s fingers and rubbed the tips of them along the ridges of the ribbon until Neil blinked a few more times and awareness returned. Neil took a shaky breath, then another, before looking over at Andrew. Andrew held his gaze, his hand going still but not pulling away. Neil flashed a small, wane smile in response to his silent question and Andrew nodded in return. 

“Sorry,” Neil said as he looked to Nicky, his voice only a little bit raspy. “What did you say?”

Nicky chewed his lip worriedly, but whatever he saw when he looked from Neil to Andrew must have told him not to fucking ask questions because he didn’t. Instead, he tapped the package on Neil’s lap to draw his attention to it again and put on a bright smile that was only a little bit forced. “You get to open this one from me next!”

And just like that, things snapped back to -- well, not to normal, but back to something far more steady. Neil gave a small, raspy laugh and nodded; Andrew finally released his hand so that Neil had the use of it to unwrap his gift. 

Which he did like a weirdo, of course, because Neil Josten couldn’t do anything like a normal person. Instead of snapping or wrangling the ribbon around the edge of the gift (which would have been _easy_ with this one, considering it was a soft package rather than a box or something more awkwardly shaped), he used his fingernails to pick at the knots, cleverly managing to actually _untie_ it and unwrap the ribbon from around the gift. Then he ripped through the smooth side of the paper, not even going for the creases or where it was taped together. 

Andrew had already seen this particular gift before, having been there when Nicky picked it out, but he still peered over to look as Neil rid the last of the paper and held it up. Those blue-of-the-world eyes brightened just as he knew they would the second Neil realized what it was. 

“Aw Nicky, thank you. This is fucking awesome!” he said with probably more enthusiasm than he had for any other gift thus far. Then he scooted forward on the couch so that he could wrap the orange and white blanket around his shoulders. It was huge, the inside of it soft and white while the outside was bright orange. The part about it that had Neil grinning like a fucking idiot, however, was the hood that flipped up, designed with fox ears and markings to denote the fox’s eyes. 

“I hope you are proud of yourself,” Andrew said tiredly, turning an unamused look on Nicky. “He is never going to go anywhere without that thing, now.”

Either Nicky saw right through his judgement or just didn’t care, because he only beamed back as he said, “Fuck yes I am!” Then his expression turned a bit wicked and he dug a similarly-shaped package out from under the tree and tossed it at him. “Oh look, there’s another one for you, too!”

Andrew caught it on reflex, looked down at it, then glared suspiciously at Nicky - who fluttered his eyelashes innocently. Andrew had gone with Nicky when he’d picked out the hooded blanket for Neil - he _knew_ that Nicky hadn’t gotten a second one… at least, not while he was there. By this point, Neil was almost vibrating with excitement as he turned to watch him, that stupid hood up as he hugged the blanket around himself, and Andrew had no choice but to accept this as his fate. He heaved a sigh and opened the gift like a normal fucking person, peeling off the ribbon and then flipping it over to rip it open at the seam. 

Soft black fabric met his fingers and he was embarrassed by the vivid pulse of _relief_ that it wasn’t orange that met his vision. He finished freeing it of the wrappings and unfolded it, holding onto fleeting hope that Nicky had gotten him one of the _normal_ blankets and not some animal themed monstrosity. His hopes were crushed, of course, when he got to the hood and found the unmistakable pointed ears and yellow eyes of a cat.

This time, when he leveled his judgement at Nicky, his cousin gave a nervous laugh and skittered backward a few feet. “They were, uh, out of wolves? That was the only one that wasn’t a bright color other than a penguin and I didn’t think you would like the penguin so uh…”

“I think it is fitting,” Erik offered with a smile, like he had forgotten that Andrew knew _exactly_ where he slept. 

“Oh. Do you.” It was not a question, but Erik turned his smile on Andrew and nodded. 

“I do. You are small and fierce. Many think you are an asshole but you care much - if only for the people you _choose_ , regardless of whether they want to be chosen or not and regardless of anyone else who _wants_ you to choose them. You have sharp claws-”

“ _The knives..!_ ” Nicky wheezed, though whether in warning or agreement was impossible to tell.

Erik must have taken it as agreement because he nodded at his boyfriend with a bright, pleased smile before returning his attention to Andrew. “Yes, that. You have an uncanny way of knowing when things are not right with your people, and linger closer to offer silent comfort in those times - even if your loved ones do not always realize that is what you are doing. Now, I do not know if you purr-”

A choking, broken sound was coming from the other end of the couch, but Andrew did not tear his gaze away from Erik to investigate whatever the fuck was up with Aaron.

“-but that is not really my business anyway.”

“Baby,” Nicky gasped. “Baby you are going to _die_. You are going to die and make me a _widow_ at the tender age of NOW and we are not even _married_ yet how could you do this to me!?”

“You.. you’ve done it,” Aaron choked out, and now it was clear that the bastard was fucking _laughing_. “You’ve.. You’ve broken down Andrew to his bare essentials. And he’s… he’s a fucking _housecat._ ”

This time Andrew _did_ tear his eyes away from Erik to glare at his brother, but his gaze caught on Neil instead. Neil was still hugging the fox-eared blanket around himself and was watching him closely. There was a brightness in his eyes that said he was also amused, but his expression was impassive, waiting. At first Andrew did not understand _why_ \- because Neil was just as much of an asshole as the rest of these fucking jerks, but then he understood. 

Neil would happily tease him when Andrew was comfortable or annoyed, but he wasn’t going to attack if Andrew was genuinely feeling vulnerable - and Neil wasn’t sure where Andrew sat yet, so he was keeping quiet until he figured it out. 

Butterflies made of light fluttered in his chest like fairies captured in a lantern. Confused creatures from a world much brighter than the darkness Andrew was accustomed to, banishing the shadows clinging to all those soft spots behind his ribs just the same. He will have suffered Neil’s care for him fifty, sixty, years - and still wouldn’t know what the fuck to do with it. 

Andrew’s jaw ached with how tightly he was gritting his teeth. He forced it to relax bit by bit, then stood up. What he needed right now was a smoke, and to get away from all these fucking assholes for a few minutes. He swept a heavy glare around the room; Aaron had finished having his seizure but looked way too smug, Kateln woefully apologetic where she sat between his legs, Nicky was concerned, Erik politely confused (but Andrew was getting to know that fucker better now, and suspected there was a deeper knowing under the mask and _that_ was disquieting), and Neil… Neil was still watching him, waiting. 

Those blue eyes warmed when they locked with his, and even though there was no _possible way_ for Neil to know what was going on in his mind, Andrew had the distinct impression that he knew it better than Andrew ever would have been able to articulate. Andrew scowled at him in accusation and stalked away, stopping only briefly to snatch his cigarettes and lighter out of his coat pocket before heading through the kitchen to go out to the side porch. Once outside the chill ripped through him and he told himself it was an _accident_ that he’d brought the stupid blanket with him, and that it meant nothing when he wound it around his shoulders to fend off the winter wind. 

Snow had started to fall in tiny suggestions of snowflakes rather than anything substantial, but the ground had remained cold enough to catch it in a light dusting of white. It was annoyingly picturesque. 

Andrew was halfway done with his cigarette when the door creaked behind him and Neil shuffled out. When he stepped into his periphery against the rail, Andrew saw that he was wearing both the fox slippers and the stupid hooded blanket, hood up. 

“I told Nicky that you liked his present,” Neil said as he plucked the pack of cigarettes from the flat plane of the railing and opened it. Instead of taking one for himself, though, he started loading the sticks into one of the cigarette cases. 

“I thought you were done lying, rabbit.”

Neil shrugged. “Wasn’t a lie.” Andrew turned more fully to face him so that his idiot could really _feel_ the full impact of his pointed lack of amusement. Neil glanced up from his work, saw his expression, and cracked a crooked grin that did truly terrible things to Andrew’s main operating system. The lantern in his chest fissured and those ephemeral little creatures started banging on the glass, eager to infest the rest of him. 

Andrew blamed the fucking ears.

“Alright,” Neil amended, “maybe it was a slight exaggeration. But you don’t hate it.” He gestured with the half-filled cigarette case, indicating the blanket hanging neatly around his shoulders. Unlike normal blankets, this one was designed not to fall off. It was more like a cloak than a blanket, but it was thick and soft and nice and warm. 

Andrew glared at him. Neil smiled knowingly back. 

“It’s warm,” Andrew permitted, lifting his smoke to take a drag before tapping the ashes over the side of the rail. 

“It is,” Neil agreed, then continued to just stare at him as Andrew finished his cigarette. The smile on his face softened as he did so, to something warm and pleased and understanding. It wasn’t an expression that most people would probably recognize as a smile - just the barest softening around the corners of his mouth, brows relaxed, eyes intent - but Andrew knew what it was. He wondered if he pretended hard enough, that expression would stop encouraging the cracks and fissures in his defenses to spread. He wondered if he _wanted_ it to.

Andrew finished his cigarette and shook his head when Neil offered another to him from the open case. Neil nodded and shut it, but when Andrew turned to head back inside he called, “Wait a sec.”

When Andrew turned back to him, Neil set the case aside and stepped up to him, lifting his hands to hover just over his shoulders. Their eyes met and Neil asked quietly, “Yes or no?”

The dancing light of mischief and affection colored Neil’s eyes a brighter, cleaner blue that it ever could have been a year ago. Maybe that was why, even though he knew _exactly_ what Neil was asking, Andrew heaved a sigh and said, “Yes.”

Neil’s hands landed only briefly on his shoulders, just long enough to grab the edge of the hood so he could pull it up over Andrew’s head. Those eyes sparked, and a wide grin of raw, unadulterated _delight_ spread across Neil’s face like a flashfire. 

At the sight, the captive fairies in his chest broke free, and Andrew felt their glowing warmth extend throughout his entire body, from the tips of his ears all the way down to his toes.

*****

Late that night, after dinner and video games and poorly-sung carols, Andrew dropped himself heavily onto the bed beside Neil after depositing the washcloth he’d just used to clean the both of them up and tugging on a pair of pajama pants. Neil was stretched out on the bed, still catching his breath.

“I’m not sure… if that was… another kind of Christmas gift… or like… some kind of weird… sort of payback.”

Andrew grunted in rough approval of Neil’s reasoning skills - because he wasn’t wrong, it was kind of both. Andrew’s desire to give Neil pleasure and make him feel so _good_ he almost couldn’t stand it did tend to blend nicely with his vindictive streak, and Andrew had zero qualms making Neil suffer for his Christmas-day antics by way of some very clever edging. 

Neil rolled his head to the side and grinned breathlessly at him, face flushed. Andrew rolled his eyes and pushed his face away before leaning over to pull open the drawer on the bedside table. He pulled out the small box and tossed it onto Neil’s chest without giving himself the time to change his mind. 

With a curious noise, Neil pushed himself carefully up into a sitting position - and though he attempted to mask it, Andrew saw him wince. He’d gone easy on him, considering the junkie’s recovery, and had been very careful not to push him past what he should be able to handle at this point, but the sight still had a clench of worried guilt stirring in his stomach for the half-second it took him to register it as stiffness rather than true pain. He wasn’t anywhere close to being able to hit the courts again, but several weeks into recovery he was stable enough for a mind-blowing orgasm - so there was at least that. 

“What’s this?” he asked, frowning as he looked from the box to Andrew and back again. 

“I wonder if by opening it, you might find out,” Andrew intoned back dryly. 

Neil rolled his eyes. “Yeah, but I mean. We already gave each other gifts.” Indeed, Neil had worn the damn sweater Andrew had gotten him all day, even though it clashed _ridiculously_ with the bright orange fleece pajama bottoms that Aaron had gotten him. 

“Just open it, rabbit.”

Neil heaved a sigh, but instead of opening the gift he set it aside and carefully slipped off the end of the bed, moving to the closet. He rifled around in there for a minute before returning with a small box of his own. Andrew caught it with one hand from where he’d moved to lean against the wall. 

“Hypocrite,” he scolded. 

Neil just shrugged as he climbed back onto the bed, easing himself down beside Andrew, also leaning against the wall. There was enough tenderness in the motion that Andrew made a mental note to make him take one of his pills tonight. Maybe it was just a bit of stiffness, but the pill would help Neil sleep through it so his body could readjust in the night. 

Mostly so that he wouldn’t have to watch as Neil opened his own box, Andrew turned his attention to the one in his hands. It wasn’t wrapped and wasn’t heavy at all. In fact, it felt _empty_ \- though Andrew knew it wouldn’t be. Upon opening it, all he saw was black cloth that might have been packing material, but even as he reached in to pull it out he realized exactly what it was. 

Armbands. Just like the ones he and Neil wore - like the ones he had _given_ Neil after his return from Baltimore. Except these were lighter weight, the material far softer and more breathable than the ones they currently wore. Upon inspection, Andrew found that they already had sheaths sewn into them between the layers of fabric so that they wouldn’t rest directly against his skin. 

His fingers curled around the bands in a fist and they folded easily, springing back when he relaxed his grip. Whatever the material was, it was sturdy as well as comfortable. 

“Andrew…” Neil’s voice was soft, tight not with anxiety but with emotion. When Andrew looked over he saw that he was cradling the gift in one hand, his fingers tracing the familiar ridges over and over again. Neil looked over when he felt Andrew’s gaze on him. Neither of them spoke. 

Because Neil did not need to ask _why_ Andrew had gotten him another copy of the key to the Columbia house, this one threaded on a sturdy leather cord so he could always keep it on him - keep it close so that it was always within reaching distance when he felt the need to run his thumb over the teeth over and over again in a reminder that he was safe, he was free, he was here. That he had a home and people who cared, a place to hide and a place to grow and a place to be… _Neil_ , even if he was still struggling with who he wanted that person to be. Nor did Andrew need to ask _how_ Neil had known that sometimes the hardest thing in the world was pulling on his armbands on one of his bad days - but that it was too much to even contemplate facing the world without them _especially_ on those days. So having a set that were easier to wear, that didn’t agitate his skin as much, that breathed better and were easier to get on and off without being too big… 

Their eyes met, and neither of them spoke. But after a moment, Neil’s gaze darted down to his lips and back up again. When he drew a breath to ask the question, Andrew cut him off with the answer.

“ _Yes_.”

Then it was soft hands and softer mouths, it was sighs and hums and beating hearts. No more words were spoken that night - but that didn’t mean nothing was said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Curious about that Nicky-Andrew shopping trip? You can read it [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27462607)


End file.
